The butler clicked his tongue disapprovingly, and shook his head. Sighing deeply, he replied: “It’s the gout, my lord. It always makes him mifty!”

“Mifty!” said the Viscount. “What you mean is that it sets him at dagger-drawing with anyone unwise enough to cross his path, you old humbugger!”

“It would not become me to agree with your lordship, so I shall hold my peace,” said Pedmore severely. “And, if I may venture to proffer a word of advice—being as I have known your honoured parent for many years longer than you have, my lord—I would respectfully beg you not to set any store by anything he may say when he’s in the gout, for he doesn’t mean it—not if it’s you! And if you was to take snuff he’d be regularly blue-devilled—he would indeed, my lord, whatever he may have said to you!”

“Bless you, Pedmore, do you think I don’t know it?” said the Viscount, smiling affectionately at him. “You must think I’m a lunkhead! Where shall I find my mother?”

“In her drawing-room, my lord.”

The Viscount nodded, and ran lightly up the broad stairway. His mother greeted his entrance to her sanctum with a warm smile, and a hand held out to him. “Come in, dearest!” she said. “Have you been having a dreadful peal rung over you?”

He kissed her hand. “Lord, yes!” he said cheerfully. “He rattled me off in famous style! In fact, he has informed me that he doesn’t wish to see my face again.”

“Oh, dear! But he doesn’t mean it, you know. Yes, of course you do: you always understand things without having to have them explained to you, don’t you?”

“Do I? It seems very unlikely! And I don’t think it can be true, for both you and old Pedmore seem to believe that I must need reassurance! I don’t, but I claim no extraordinary powers of understanding for that! No one who was not a confirmed sapskull could suppose—being intimately acquainted with Papa!—that his violent attacks spring from anything but colic and gout! I feared the worst when I saw him partake so lavishly of the curried crab at dinner last night; and my fears were confirmed when he embarked on the second bottle of port. Pray don’t think me captious, Mama, but ought he to regale himself quite so unwisely?”