“I shan’t be alive to see it,” said the Earl, seeking refuge in decrepitude, but slightly damaging his effect by adding an acrimonious rider: “Much any of you will care!”

The Viscount laughed, but with a good deal of affection. “No, no, Papa!” he said. “Don’t try to pitch the fork to me! I haven’t been on the town for nine years—and intimately acquainted with you for twenty-nine years!—without learning when a man is trying to come crab over me! Good God, sir, you’re all skin and whipcord—saving only a tendency to gout, which you may easily overcome by not drinking the best part of two bottles of port at a sitting and you’ll hold for a long trig! Long enough, I’ve little doubt, to rake down a son of mine as you’re raking me down today!”

The Earl could not help being gratified to know that his heir considered him to be in very good condition, but he thought it proper to say austerely that he neither understood nor approved of the cant expressions so deplorably in use amongst the young men of the day. He toyed for a moment with the impulse to inform the Viscount, in forthright terms, that when he desired his opinion of his drinking habits he would ask him for it, but discarded this notion, because he knew that no dependence could be placed on Ashley’s receiving a snub in filial silence, and he had no wish to embark on an argument in which he stood on very unreliable ground. Instead, he said: “A son of yours? I want no base-born brats, I thank you, Desford—though I daresay you have a score—any number of them!” he amended hastily.

“Not to my knowledge, sir,” said the Viscount.

“I’m glad to hear it! But if you had agreed to the marriage I planned for you a son of yours might have been sitting on my knee at this moment!”

“I hesitate to contradict you, sir, but I find myself quite unable to believe that any grandchild attempting—at this moment—to sit on your knee would have met with anything but a severe rebuff.”