And this chance occurred the same afternoon, when the other two aunts had gone out to tea, to a house which Ascott voted "slow," and declined going to.

She remained to make tea for him, and in the mean time took him for a constitutional up and down the public walks hard by.
Ascott listened at first very good humoredly; once or twice calling her "a dear little prig," in his patronizing way--he was rather fond of patronizing his Aunt Hilary.

But when she seriously spoke of his duties, as no longer a boy but a man, who ought now to assume the true, manly right of thinking for and taking care of other people, especially his aunts, Ascott began to flush up angrily.
"Now stop that, Aunt Hilary: I'll not have you coming Mr.Lyon over me." "What do you mean ?" For of late Ascott had said very little about Mr.Lyon--not half so much as Mr.Lyon, in his steadily persistent letters to Miss Leaf, told her about her nephew Ascott.
"I mean that I'll not be preached to like that by a woman.

It's bad enough to stand it from a man; but then Lyon's a real sharp fellow, who knows the world, which women don't, Aunt Hilary.

Besides, he coaches me in my Latin and Greek; so I let him pitch into me now and then.