“Then come a note for the boy which the perfect-mannered Englishman that was tending us said was brought by a messenger.  Young Angus glanced at the page and broke out indignantly.  ‘The thieving old pirate!’ he says.  ’Last night he thought it would be about eighteen hundred dollars, and that sounded hysterical enough for the few little things we’d scratched or mussed up.  I told him he would doubtless feel better this morning, but in any event to send the bill to me and I would pay it.’

“‘Quite right of you,’ says Ellabelle proudly.

“’And now the scoundrel sends me one for twenty-three hundred and odd.  He’s a robber, net!’

“Old Angus said never a word, but chewed slowly, whilst various puzzling expressions chased themselves acrost his eloquent face.  I couldn’t make a thing out of any of them.

“‘Never patronize the fellow again,’ says Ellabelle warmly.

“‘As to that,’ says her son, ’he hinted something last night about having me arrested if I ever tried to patronize him again, but that isn’t the point.  He’s robbing me now.’

“‘Oh, money!’ says Ellabelle in a low tone of disgust and with a gesture like she was rebuking her son for mentioning such a thing before the servant.

“‘But I don’t like to be taken advantage of,’ says he, looking very annoyed and grand.  Then old Angus swallowed something he’d been chewing for eight minutes and spoke up with an entirely new expression that puzzled me more than ever.

“’If you’re sure you have the right of it, don’t you submit to the outrage.’

“Angus, Junior, backed up a little bit at this, not knowing quite how to take the old man’s mildness.  ’Oh, of course the fellow might win out if he took it into court,’ he says.  ’Every one knows the courts are just a mass of corruption.’

“‘True, I’ve heard gossip to that effect,’ says his father.  ’Yet there must be some way to thwart the crook.  I’m feeling strangely ingenious at the moment.’  He was very mild, and yet there was something sinister and Scotch about him that the boy felt.

“‘Of course I’d pay it out of my own money,’ he remarks generously.

“‘Even so, I hate to see you cheated,’ says his father kindly.  ’I hate to have you pay unjust extortions out of the mere pittance your tight-fisted old father allows you.’

“Young Angus said nothing to this, but blushed and coughed uncomfortably.

“‘If you hurt that hotel anything like twenty-three hundred dollars’ worth, it must be an interesting sight,’ his father goes on brightly.

“‘Oh, it was funny at the time,’ says Angus boy, cheering up again.

“‘Things often are,’ says old Angus.  ‘I’ll have a look.’

“‘At the bill?’