"Well! is that the end of it?" enquired Mr. Demetrius in angry
amazement.

"I humbly beg your honour's pardon," said Margari with meek intrepidity,
"there's nothing about reading _after six_ in our agreement"--and off he
went. Mr. Demetrius thereupon flew into a violent rage, cursed and
swore, vowed that he would dismiss his reader on the spot, and as the
morning grew lighter fell into a deep, death-like, narcotic sleep from
which he would not have awakened if the house had come tumbling about
his ears. When he did awake, about ten o'clock, his first care was to
make enquiries about Mr. John. Then he sent the porter to the police
station to inform the authorities that his son and Mr. Hátszegi, who
were both staying at the Queen of England inn, were going to fight a
duel, which should be prevented at all hazards. A police constable, at
this announcement, flung himself into a hackney-coach and set off at
full speed to make enquiries. Half an hour later a heyduke was sent back
to the porter to tell him that either the whole affair must be a hoax,
as nothing was known of a duel, or else that the two combatants must
already be dead and buried, as not a word could be heard of either of
them. Luckily, towards the afternoon, Mr. John himself arrived in a
somewhat dazed condition, like one who has been up drinking all night.
The members of the family were all sitting together as usual in Mr.
Demetrius's room, listening in silence to his heckling, when the tidings
of Mr. John's arrival reached him. Demetrius immediately summoned him.
He sent back word at first that he was lying down to try to sleep, which
was an absurd excuse for even the richest man to give in the forenoon;
on being summoned a second time he threatened to box the porter's ears;
only the third time, when Clementina was sent with the message that if
he did not come at once, his sick father would come and fetch him, did
he respond to the call and appear before them in a pet.