Now Julia was surprised and pleased at Percy’s good sense, and she did not care whether he got it from the newspapers or where he got it from; it was there; so she resisted, and said, coldly and firmly, “Thank you, uncle, but I don’t want the primroses, and Walter does not want me.  Come, Percy dear;” and so she marched off; but she had not gone many steps before, having a great respect for old age, she ordered Percy, in a whisper, to make some apology to her uncle.

Percy did not much like the commission.  However, he went back, and said, very civilly, “This is a free country, but I am afraid I have been a little too free in expressing my opinion; let me hope you are not annoyed with me.”

“I am never annoyed with a fool,” said the implacable Colonel.

This was too much for any little man to stand.

“That is why you are always on such good terms with yourself,” said Percy, as red as a turkey-cock.

The Colonel literally stared with amazement.  Hitherto it had been for him to deliver bayonet thrusts, not to receive them.

Julia pounced on her bantam-cock, and with her left hand literally pulled him off the premises, and shook her right fist at him till she got him out of sight of the foe; then she kissed him on both cheeks, and burst out laughing; and, indeed, she was so tickled that she kept laughing at intervals, whether the immediate subject of the conversation was grave or gay.  It is hard not to laugh when a very little fellow cheeks a very big one.  Even Walter, though he admired as well as loved his father, hung his head, and his shoulders shook with suppressed risibility.  Colonel Clifford detected him in this posture, and in his wrath gave his chair a whack with his staff that brought Master Walter to the position of a private soldier when the drill-sergeant cries “ATTENTION!”

“Did you hear that, sir?” said he.

“I did,” said Walter:  “cheeky little beggar.  But you know, father, you were rather hard upon him before his sweetheart, and a little pot is soon hot.”

“There was nothing to be hot about,” said the Colonel, naively; “but that is neither here nor there.  You are ten times worse than he is.  He is only a prating, pedantic puppy, but you are a muff, sir, a most unmitigated muff, to stand there mum-chance and let such an article as that carry off the prize.”

“Oh, father,” said Walter, “why will you not see that the prize is a living woman, a woman with a will of her own, and not a French eagle, or the figure-head of a ship?  Now do listen to reason.”

“Not a word,” said the Colonel, marching off.

“But excuse me,” said Walter, “I have another thing far more important to speak to you about:  this unhappy lawsuit.”

“That’s no business of yours, and I don’t want your opinion of it; there is no more fight in you than there is in a hen-sparrow.  I decline your company and your pacific twaddle; I have no patience with a muff;” and the Colonel marched off, leaving his son planted there, as the French say.