“I assure you!”
“That is not true, I tell you! Only the other day, you said the house was vulgar; two days ago, you said Van Saetzema looked like a farm-labourer.”
“But you yourself said, at Emilie’s wedding . . .”
“It’s not true: I said nothing. I tell you, once and for all, I won’t have you always crabbing one of my sisters and her household. This time, it is the boys who are rather rough. . . .”
“Oh, perhaps you want to see Addie like them?”
“I think it ridiculous for Addie to be always going about with undergraduates. The Van Saetzema boys are very nice and of his own age.”
“And I think them three unmannerly young blackguards.”
“Henri, I forbid you from this time forward to comment on my family in my presence!”
“Look here, you give your orders to your servants, not to me!”
“I won’t have it, I tell you. . . .”
But he flung down his napkin, rose from his seat, left the room suddenly, in a passion. Addie sat quietly looking before him, playing with his fork.
“Papa has very bad manners! To go throwing down his napkin, slamming the door, like a schoolboy!” she said, fretfully, involuntarily, as though to annoy Addie. But he frowned and said nothing; and she went on, “At least, in my father’s house I was never accustomed to such rudeness!”
Suddenly, he clenched his little fist and banged it on the table till the glasses rang again:
