Likewise he was awkward, and had a nervous, unpleasing voice.
Nevertheless he seemed very pleased with himself, and was, in my
opinion, a boy who could well bear being beaten with rods.

For a long time we confronted one another without speaking as we took
stock of each other. When the flood of dresses had swept past I made
shift to begin a conversation by asking him whether it had not been very
close in the carriage.

"I don't know," he answered indifferently. "I never ride inside it, for
it makes me feel sick directly, and Mamma knows that. Whenever we are
driving anywhere at night-time I always sit on the box. I like that, for
then one sees everything. Philip gives me the reins, and sometimes the
whip too, and then the people inside get a regular--well, you know," he
added with a significant gesture "It's splendid then."

"Master Etienne," said a footman, entering the hall, "Philip wishes me
to ask you where you put the whip."

"Where I put it? Why, I gave it back to him."

"But he says that you did not."

"Well, I laid it across the carriage-lamps!"

"No, sir, he says that you did not do that either. You had better
confess that you took it and lashed it to shreds. I suppose poor Philip
will have to make good your mischief out of his own pocket." The footman
(who looked a grave and honest man) seemed much put out by the affair,
and determined to sift it to the bottom on Philip's behalf.