The
opportunity was one not to be missed. The outraged parent at last
realised that he had borne with him long enough, borne long enough with
his folderols of art and nonsense; and so determined was he on the
instant that he would have no more of it, that, with a quite remarkable
energy, he had thereupon repaired to his son's room, opened the window,
and begun vigorously to throw his pretty editions, his dainty
water-colours, his drawers full of letters, his cast of the Venus of
Milo, out on to the lawn, upon which at the moment a heavy rain was
also falling.
In the very whirlwind of his righteous vandalism his son had returned,
and, being a muscular, hot-blooded lad, had taken his father by the
throat, called him a drunken beast, and hurled him to the floor, where
he pinned him down with a knee on his chest, and might conceivably have
made an end of him, but for the interference of mother and sisters, who
succeeded at last in getting the dazed and somewhat sobered parent
to bed.
Having raked together from the sodden _debris_ beneath his window some
disfigured remains of his poor treasures, Ned Hazell had left the house
in the early hours of the morning, in good earnest for ever.
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