Next day Heriot walked slowly past Mr.Boddy holding the portrait in his hands.

The usher called to him! 'What have you there, Heriot ?' My hero stared.

'Only a family portrait,' he answered, thrusting it safe in his pocket and fixing his gaze on Julia's window.
'Permit me to look at it,' said Mr.Boddy.
'Permit me to decline to let you,' said Heriot.
'Look at me, sir,' cried Boddy.
'I prefer to look elsewhere, sir,' replied Heriot, and there was Julia visible at her window.
'I asked you, sir, civilly,' quoth Boddy, 'for permission to look,--I used the word intentionally; I say I asked you for permission...' 'No, you didn't,' Heriot retorted, quite cool; 'inferentially you did; but you did not use the word permission.' 'And you turned upon me impudently,' pursued Boddy, whose colour was thunder: 'you quibbled, sir; you prevaricated; you concealed what you were carrying...' 'Am carrying,' Heriot corrected his tense; 'and mean to, in spite of every Boddy,' he murmured audibly.
'Like a rascal detected in an act of felony,' roared Boddy, 'you concealed it, sir...' 'Conceal it, sir.' 'And I demand, in obedience to my duty, that you instantly exhibit it for my inspection, now, here, at once; no parleying; unbutton, or I call Mr.Rippenger to compel you.' I was standing close by my brave Heriot, rather trembling, studious of his manfulness though I was.

His left foot was firmly in advance, as he said, just in the manner to start an usher furious: 'I concealed it, I conceal it; I was carrying it, I carry it: you demand that I exhibit for your inspection what I mean no Boddy to see?
I have to assure you respectfully, sir, that family portraits are sacred things with the sons of gentlemen.

Here, Richie, off!' I found the portrait in my hand, and Heriot between me and the usher, in the attitude of a fellow keeping another out of his home at prisoner's-base.