But Morris was not so easy in his mind. This unusual act of
insubordination had already troubled him; and these mutinous words now
sounded ominously in his ears. He looked at the old gentleman uneasily.
Upon one occasion, many years before, when Joseph was delivering a
lecture, the audience had revolted in a body; finding their entertainer
somewhat dry, they had taken the question of amusement into their own
hands; and the lecturer (along with the board schoolmaster, the Baptist
clergyman, and a working-man's candidate, who made up his bodyguard) was
ultimately driven from the scene. Morris had not been present on that
fatal day; if he had, he would have recognized a certain fighting
glitter in his uncle's eye, and a certain chewing movement of his lips,
as old acquaintances. But even to the inexpert these symptoms breathed
of something dangerous.

'Well, well,' said Morris. 'I have no wish to bother you further till we
get to London.'

Joseph did not so much as look at him in answer; with tremulous hands
he produced a copy of the British Mechanic, and ostentatiously buried
himself in its perusal.

'I wonder what can make him so cantankerous?' reflected the nephew. 'I
don't like the look of it at all.' And he dubiously scratched his nose.

The train travelled forth into the world, bearing along with it the
customary freight of obliterated voyagers, and along with these old
Joseph, affecting immersion in his paper, and John slumbering over
the columns of the Pink Un, and Morris revolving in his mind a dozen
grudges, and suspicions, and alarms. It passed Christchurch by the sea,
Herne with its pinewoods, Ringwood on its mazy river. A little behind