"They, on their side, perhaps misunderstand your lack of interest in their pursuits. They cannot see--how should they?--that you have altered your mode of life, and when they catch the difference between you and the Richard Bultitude they knew, why, they are apt to resent it." "They are," agreed Mr. Bultitude: "they resent it in a confounded disagreeable way, you know. Why, I assure you, that only last night I was----" "Hush," said Mr. Blinkhorn, holding up one hand, "complaints are unmanly. But I see you wonder at my knowing all this?" "Well," said Paul, "I am rather surprised." "What would you say if I told you I had undergone it myself in my time?" "You don't mean to tell me there are _two_ Garudâ Stones in this miserable world!" cried Paul, thoroughly astonished. "I don't know what you mean now, but I can say with truth that I too have had my experiences--my trials. Months ago, from certain signs, I noticed, I foresaw that this was coming upon you." "Then," said Mr. Bultitude, "I think, in common decency, you might have warned me. A post-card would have done it. I should have been better prepared to meet this, then!" "It would have been worse than fruitless to attempt to hurry on the crisis. It might have even prevented what I fondly hoped would come to pass." "Fondly hoped!" said Paul, "upon my word you speak plainly, sir." "Yes," said Mr. Blinkhorn. "You see I knew the Dick Bultitude that was, so well; he was frolicksome, impulsive, mischievous even, but under it all there lay a nature of sterling worth." "Sterling worth!" cried Paul. "A scoundrel, I tell you, a heartless, selfish young scoundrel. Call things by their right names, if you please." "No, no," said Mr. Blinkhorn, "this extreme self-depreciation is morbid, very morbid. There was no actual vice." "No actual vice! Why, God bless my soul, do you call ingratitude--the basest, most unfilial, most treacherous ingratitude--no vice, sir? You may be a very excellent young man, but if you gloss over things in that fashion, your moral sense must be perverted, sir--strangely perverted." "There were faults on both sides, I fear," said Mr. Blinkhorn, growing a little scandalised by the boy's odd warmth of expression. "I have heard something of what you had to bear with. On the one hand, a father, undemonstrative, stern, easily provoked; on the other, a son, thoughtless, forgetful, and at times it may be even wilful. But you are too sensitive; you think too much of what seems to me a not unnatural (although of course improper) protest against coldness and injustice. I should be the last to encourage a child against a parent, but, to comfort your self-reproach, I think it right to assure you that, in my judgment, the outburst you refer to was very excusable." "Oh," said Paul, "you do? You call that comfort? Excusable! Why, what the dooce do you mean, sir? You're taking the other side now!"