against the darker dread, they now, for the first time, fully
believed that monetary ruin had befallen their father. They were civil to
Mrs. Chump, and forgiving toward her brogue, and her naked outcries of
complaint and suddenly--suggested panic; but their pity, save when some
odd turn in her conduct moved them, was reserved dutifully for their
father. His wretched sensations at the pouring of a storm of tears from
the exhausted creature, caused Arabella to rise and say to Mrs. Chump
kindly, "Now let me take you to bed."

But such a novel mark of tender civility caused the woman to exclaim:
"Oh, dear! if ye don't sound like wheedlin' to keep me blind."

Even this was borne with. "Come; it will do you good to rest," said
Arabella.

"And how'll I sleep?"

"By shutting my eye--'peeps,'--as I used to tell my old nurse," said
Adela; and Mrs. Chump, accustomed to an occasional (though not public)
bit of wheedling from her, was partially reassured.

"I'll sit with you till you do sleep," said Arabella.

"Suppose," Mrs. Chump moaned, "suppose I'm too poor aver to repay ye? If
I'm a bankrup'?--oh!"

Arabella smiled. "Whatever I may do is certainly not done for a
remuneration, and such a service as this, at least, you need not speak
of."

Mrs. Chump's evident surprise, and doubt of the honesty of the change in
her manner, caused Arabella very acutely to feel its dishonesty. She
looked at Cornelia with envy. The latter lady was leaning meditatively,
her arm on a side of her chair, like a pensive queen, with a ready, mild,
embracing look for the company. 'Posture' seemed always to triumph over
action.

Before quitting the room, Mrs. Chump asked Mr. Pole whether he would be
up early the next morning.

"Very early,--you beat me, if you can," said he, aware that the question
was put as a test to his sincerity.

"Oh, dear! Suppose it's onnly a false alarrm of the 'bomunable Mr.
Paricles--which annybody'd have listened to--ye know that!" said Mrs.
Chump, going forth.

She stopped in the doorway, and turned her head round, sniffing, in a
very pronounced way. "Oh, it's you," she flashed on Wilfrid; "it's you,
my dear, that smell so like poor Chump. Oh! if we're not rooned, won't we
dine together! Just give me a kiss, please. The smell of ye's
comfortin'."

Wilfrid bent his cheek forward, affecting to laugh, though the subject
was tragic to him.

"Oh! perhaps I'll sleep, and not look in the mornin' like that beastly
ta