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204 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
"I have asked your pardon," Philip said. "I was annoyed
about—no matter what—and had no right to be rude to Mrs.
Brandon's guest."
" I say, did you tell the governor that you saw me in Thornhaugh
Street ?" asks Hunt.
" I was very rude and ill-tempered, and again I confess I was
wrong," said Phil, boggling and stuttering, and turning very red.
He remembered his father's injunction.
" I say again, sir, did you tell your father of our meeting this
morning ?" demands the elergyman.
"And pray, sir, what right have you to ask me about my
private conversation with my father ?" asks Philip, with towering
dignity.
" You won't tell me ? Then you have told him. He's a nice
man, your father is, for a moral man."
"l am not anxious for your opinion about my father's morality,
Mr. Hunt," says Philip, gasping in a bewildered manner, and
drumming the table. "I am here to replace him in his absence,
and treat his guest with civility."
" Civility ! Pretty civility !" says the other, glaring at him.
" Such as it is, sir, it is my best, and—I—I have no other,"
groans the young man.
"Old friend of your father's, a university man, a Master of
Arts, a gentleman born, by Jove ! a clergyman—though I sink
that ________ "
" Yes, sir, you do sink that," says Philip.
"Am I a dog," shrieks out the clergyman, "to be treated by
you in this way ? Who are you ? Do you know who you are ?"
"Sir, I am striving with all my strength to remember," says
Philip.
" Come ! I say ! don't try any of your confounded airs on me ?"
shrieks Hunt, with a profusion of oaths, and swallowing glass after
glass from the various decanters before him. " Hang me, when I
was a young man, I would have sent one—two at your nob, though
you were twice as tall ! Who are you, to patronise your senior,
your father's old pal—a university man :—you confounded supercilious
______ "
" I am here to pay every attention to my father's guest," says
Phil ; " but, if you have finished your wine, I shall be happy to
break up the meeting, as early as you please."
" You shall pay me ; I swear you shall," said Hunt.
" Oh, Mr. Hunt !" cried Philip, jumping up, and clenching his
great fists, "I should desire nothing better."
The man shrank back, thinking Philip was going to strike him