, while they were in the car, but she
could not find voice to reply to any of Norton's kind words, which were
meant to be very soothing; and as soon as they got home she went
straight to her room. Norton went to his mother.

"We have had a splendid confounded time! mamma," he burst out.

"Splendid and confounded?" his mother repeated.

"No, ma'am. Splendidly confounded, I should have said. We went to get
grandmamma's present. And Pink, she has contrived to make David and
Judy as mad with her as they can be; and that's saying a good deal,
when you are talking English. Now how it's to be undone, I don't know.
I suppose Pink is crying her eyes out about it. She had no heart to go
to Tiffany's or anything. We are going after dinner, though."

"But what is the matter? what has she done, Norton?"

"Came out with temperance and _religion_, and all that sort of thing,
to David and Judy; fancy it, mamma! and more than that, with the very
part of religion that they like least of all. Wouldn't help us buy a
liqueur stand for grandmamma, because she doesn't think it is right to
use cordials."

"What a child!" exclaimed Mrs. Laval.

"She's got pluck," said Norton, picking up a pin from the floor and
energetically giving it a cast into the fire; "she's a brick, she is! I
knew that the first day I saw her; but mamma, she is very soft in that
spot."

Mrs. Laval looked sober. Perhaps she remembered that the late Mr. Laval
had also been soft in that spot, though in an entirely different way.
Perhaps she recollected how many variously shaped glasses were needed
around his dinner plate, and how he carried about a strong breath and a
red face for hours afterward, and how she had been sometimes ever so
little ashamed of him. She was now silent.

"Mamma, can't you talk to her?" Norton began again.

"About what?" said Mrs. Laval starting.

"This, ma'am; and make her a little more like other people."

"I would just as lieve she wouldn't drink wine, Norton; or you either."

"Or grandmamma either, mamma?"

"You have nothing to do with that. Your grandmamma is an old lady. I am
not talking of grandmamma, but of you."

"Well do you want Matilda to preach temperance, ma'am?"

"You let Matilda alone. She will not go far wrong. She is _never_
forward. Was she to-day?"

"No," said Norton laughing a little; "it was like a small canary bird
chirping out a lecture."

"You let her alone," Mrs. Laval repeated; "and don't let the others