“Oh! of course, if you think that...” he said, paused as if seeking for some threat of retaliation, and then flung himself, the picture of dudgeon, into a chair by the wall.  He turned his back towards Brenda and glared steadfastly at his rival.  I received the impression that the poor deluded boy was trying to revenge himself on Brenda.  At the back of his mind he seemed still to regard her escapade as a foolish piece of bravado, undertaken chiefly to torture himself.  His attitude was meant to convey that the joke had gone far enough, and that he would not stand much more of it.

For a time at least he was, fortunately, out of the piece.  Perhaps he thought the influence of his attitude must presently take effect; that Brenda, whom he so habitually adored with his eyes, would be intimidated by his threat of being finally offended?

The three other protagonists took no more notice of the sulky Ronnie, but they could not at once recover any approach to sequence.

“I want to know why you’ve come up here,” Banks persisted.

“That’s not the point,” Jervaise began in a tone that I thought was meant to be conciliatory.

“But it is—­partly,” Brenda put in.

“My dear girl, do let’s have the thing clear,” her brother returned, but she diverted his apparent intention of making a plain statement by an impatient,—­

“Oh! it’s all clear enough.”

“But it isn’t, by any means,” Jervaise said.

“To us it is,” Banks added, meaning, I presume, that he and Brenda had no doubts as to their intentions.

“You’re going to persist in the claim you made this morning?” Jervaise asked.

Banks smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t be silly, Frank,” Brenda interpreted.  “You must know that we can’t do anything else.”

“It’s foolish to say you can’t,” he returned irritably, “when so obviously you can.”

“Well, anyway, we’re going to,” Banks affirmed with a slight inconsequence.

“And do you purpose to stay on here?” Jervaise said sharply, as if he were posing an insuperable objection.

“Not likely,” Banks replied.  “We’re going to Canada, the whole lot of us.”

“Your father and mother, too?”

“Yes, if I can persuade ’em; and I can,” Banks said.

“You haven’t tried yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Don’t they know anything about this?  Anything, I mean, before last night’s affair?”

“Practically nothing at all,” Banks said.  “Of course, nothing whatever about last night.”

“And you honestly think...” began Jervaise.

“That’ll be all right, won’t it, Anne?” Banks replied.

But Anne, still leaning back in the corner of the settle, refused to answer.

Jervaise turned and looked down at her.  “If you all went...?” he said, giving his incomplete sentence the sound of a question.