Wilfrid, turning away. "To act a farce for their benefit! That fellow
will explode when he gets downstairs. I see how it is. This woman,
Chump, is making them behave like schoolgirls."

He conceived the idea sharply, and forthwith, without any preparation,
he was ready to treat these high-aspiring ladies like schoolgirls. Nor
was there a lack of justification; for when they came down to his
shouts in the passage, they hushed, and held a finger aloft, and looked
altogether so unlike what they aimed at being, that Wilfrid's sense of
mastery became almost contempt.

"I know perfectly what you have to tell me," he said. "Mrs. Chump is
here, you have quarrelled with her, and she has shut her door, and you
have shut yours. It's quite intelligible and full of dignity. I really
can't smother my voice in consequence."

He laughed with unnecessary abandonment. The sensitive young women
wanted no other schooling to recover themselves. In a moment they were
seen leaning back and contemplating him amusedly, as if he had been the
comic spectacle, and were laughing for a wager. There are few things so
sour as the swallowing of one's own forced laugh. Wilfrid got it
down, and commenced a lecture to fill the awkward pause. His sisters
maintained the opera-stall posture of languid attention, contesting his
phrases simply with their eyebrows, and smiling. He was no match for
them while they chose to be silent: and indeed if the business of life
were conducted in dumb show, women would beat men hollow. They posture
admirably. In dumb show they are equally good for attack and defence.
But this is not the case in speech. So, when Arabella explained that
their hope was to see Mrs. Chump go that day, owing to the rigorous
exclusion of all amusement and the outer world from the house, Wilfrid
regained his superior footing and made his lecture tell. In the middle
of it, there rang a cry from the doorway that astonished even him, it
was so powerfully Irish.

"The lady you have called down is here," said Arabella's cold glance, in
answer to his.

They sat with folded hands while Wilfrid turned to Mrs. Chump, who
advanced, a shock of blue satin to the eye, crying, on a jump: "Is ut
Mr. Wilfrud?"

"It's I, ma'am." Wilfrid bowed, and the censorious ladies could not deny
that, his style was good, if his object was to be familiar. And if that
was his object, he was paid for it. A great thick kiss was planted on
his cheek, with the motto: "Harm