"Don't attempt to soften me with pothouse endearments," said John, fiercely. "I will not be called 'old chap.'" "All right, old chap, I won't," said Hugh. "But before you go jumping into the street like a lighted cracker, please listen. Nobody has been ordering anything in your name. You're absolutely off the lines there. Why, I exhausted your credit years ago. And I don't see why you should grudge poor old George a few dinners." "You rascal," John stammered. "You impudent rascal!" "Don't annoy him, Hughie," Aubrey advised. "I can see his point." "Oh, you can, sir, can you?" John snapped. "You can understand, can you, how it affects me to be saddled with brothers like these and port like this?" John was so furious that he could not bring himself to mention George or Hugh by name: they merely represented maddening abstractions of relationship, and he longed for some phrase like "my son's friend" with which he might disown them forever. "You mustn't blame your brother George, Mr. Touchwood," urged Aubrey. "He's not involved in this latest affair. I'm sorry we told the mater that he was you, but the mater required jollying along, as I explained. She can't appreciate Hugh. He's too modern for her." "I sympathize with Mrs. Fenton." "You must forgive a ruse. It's just the kind of ruse I should think a playwright would appreciate. You know. Charley's Aunt and all that." John clenched his fist: "Don't you mutter to me about a sense of humor," he said to Hugh, wrathfully. "I wasn't muttering," replied Hugh. "I merely observed that a little sense of humor wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm sorry that George has been dragged like a red herring across the business, because it's a much more serious matter than simply introducing George to Mrs. Fenton as you and selling her some port which personally I think is not at all bad, eh, Aubrey?" He poured himself out another glass to prove his conviction. "You may think all this a joke," John retorted. "But I don't. I consider it a gross exhibition of bad taste." "All right. Granted. Let's leave it at that," sighed Hugh, wearily. "But you don't give a fellow much encouragement to own up when he really is in a tight corner. However, personally I've got past minding. If I'm sentenced to penal servitude, it'll be your fault for not listening. Only don't say I disgraced the family name." "Hugh's right," Aubrey put in. "We really are in a deuce of a hole." "Disgrace the family name?" John repeated. "Allow me to tell you that when you hawk George round London as your brother, the playwright, I consider _that_ is disgracing the family name." "So that if I'm arrested for forgery," Hugh asked, "you won't mind?" "Forgery?" John gasped. Hugh nodded. "Yes, we had bad luck in the straight," he murmured, tossing off two more glasses of port. "Cleared every hurdle like a bird and ... however, it's no good grumbling. We just didn't pull it off." "No," sighed Aubrey. "We were beaten by a short head."