His father glanced across at him, where he sat with his heavy, plain face, his long arms and short legs, and the sight merely irritated him.  With his passion for convention (and one of the most important conventions was that Combers should be fine, strapping, normal people) he hated the thought that it was his son who presented that appearance.  And his son’s mind seemed to him at this moment as ungainly as his person.  Again, very unwisely, he laughed, still thinking to carry this off by the high hand.

“Yes, but I can’t take that rubbish seriously,” he said.  “I am asking your permission now to inquire, without any nonsense, into what you mean.”

Michael frowned.  He felt the insincerity of his father’s laugh, and rebelled against the unfairness of it.  The question, he knew well, was sarcastically asked, the flavour of irony in the “permission to inquire” was not there by accident.  To speak like that implied contempt of his opposition; he felt that he was being treated like a child over some nursery rebellion, in which, subsequently, there is no real possibility of disobedience.  He felt his anger rising in spite of himself.

“If you refer to it as rubbish, sir, there is the end of the matter.”

“Ah!  I thought we should soon agree,” said Lord Ashbridge, chuckling.

“You mistake me,” said Michael.  “There is the end of the matter, because I won’t discuss it any more, if you treat me like this.  I will say good night, if you intend to persist in the idea that you can just brush my resolves away like that.”

This clearly took his father aback; it was a perfectly dignified and proper attitude to take in the face of ridicule, and Lord Ashbridge, though somewhat an adept at the art of self-deception—­as, for instance, when he habitually beat the golf professional—­could not disguise from himself that his policy had been to laugh and blow away Michael’s absurd ideas.  But it was abundantly clear at this moment that this apparently easy operation was out of his reach.

He got up with more amenity in his manner than he had yet shown, and laid his hand on Michael’s shoulder as he stood in front of him, evidently quite prepared to go away.

“Come, my dear Michael.  This won’t do,” he said.  “I thought it best to treat your absurd schemes with a certain lightness, and I have only succeeded in irritating you.”

Michael was perfectly aware that he had scored.  And as his object was to score he made another criticism.

“When you say ‘absurd schemes,’ sir,” he said, with quiet respect, “are you not still laughing at them?”

Lord Ashbridge again retreated strategically.

“Very well; I withdraw absurd,” he said.  “Now sit down again, and we will talk.  Tell me what is in your mind.”

Michael made a great effort with himself.  He desired, in the secret, real Michael, to be reasonable and cordial, to behave filially, while all the time his nerves were on edge with his father’s ridicule, and with his instinctive knowledge of his father’s distaste for him.