“Max, you fool, come here!” was his unpromising summons.

Max came at once, rather red in the face and bright of eyes.  Mrs. Wedmore, standing, frightened and anxious, in the background, thought she had never seen her darling boy look so handsome, so manly.  He came in very quietly, without swaggering, without defiance, as if he had not noticed the offensive epithet.

His father, who was by this time on the post of vantage, the hearth-rug, with his hands behind him and his back to the fire, pointed imperiously to a chair.

“Sit down, sir.”

Max sat down very deliberately on a chair other than the one his father had chosen for him, and looked down on the floor.

“So you are at your old tricks, your old habits!” began Mr. Wedmore.

Max looked up.  Then he sat up.

“What old tricks and habits do you mean, sir?”

“Running after every girl you see, and in defiance of all decency, under your mother’s very nose.”

Mrs. Wedmore would have interposed here, but her husband waved his hand imperially, and she remained silent.  Max leaned back in his chair and met his father’s eyes steadily.

“You have made a mistake, sir, and my mother has made a mistake, too.  It is quite true she may have seen me kissing Miss—­Miss—­Carrie, in fact.  But I hope to have the right to kiss her.  I want to marry her.”

“To marry this—­this—­”

“This beautiful young girl, whom nobody has a word to say against,” interrupted Max, in a louder voice.  “Come, sir, you can’t say I’m at my old tricks now.  I’ve never wanted to marry any girl before.”

For the moment Mr. Wedmore was stupefied.  This was worse, far worse than he had expected.  Mrs. Wedmore, also, was rather shocked.  But the sensation, was tempered, in her case, with admiration of her boy’s spirit in daring to make this avowal.

“Mind, I only say I want to marry her.  Because, so far, she has refused to have anything to say to me.”

“Not refused to marry you!” broke in Mrs. Wedmore, unable to remain quiet under such provocation as this.

“Yes, refused to marry me, mother.  I have asked her—­begged her.”

“Oh, it’s only artfulness, to make you more persistent,” cried Mrs. Wedmore, indignantly.

“Or perhaps,” suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, “the girl is shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such a piece of idiocy and leave him to his own resources.”

Max said nothing for a moment; then he remarked, quietly: 

“You have been threatening to do that already, sir, before there was any question of my marrying.”

Mrs. Wedmore was frightened by the tone Max was using.  He was so much quieter than usual, so much more decided in his tone, that she began to think there was less chance than usual of his coming to an agreement with his father.