father could wish--eh? if
you could manage to persuade them not to be so fond of me. They must
think of their future, of course. They won't always have a home--a
father, a father, I mean. God grant they may never want!--eh? the
dinner; boh! let's in to dinner. Ma'am!"

He bowed an arm to Mrs. Chump, who took it, with a scared look at him:
"Why, if ye haven't got a tear in your eye, Pole?"

"Nonsense, nonsense," quoth he, bowing another arm to Adela.

"Papa, I'm not to be winked at," said she, accepting convoy; and there
was some laughter, all about nothing, as they went in to dinner.

The ladies were studiously forbearing in their treatment of Mrs.
Chump. Women are wonderfully quick scholars under ridicule, though it
half-kills them. Wilfrid's theory had impressed the superior grace of
civility upon their minds, and, now that they practised it, they
were pleased with the contrast they presented. Not the less were they
maturing a serious resolve. The suspicion that their father had secret
vile designs in relation to Mrs. Chump, they kept in the background. It
was enough for them that she was to be a visitor, and would thus destroy
the great circle they had projected. To accept her in the circle, they
felt, was out of the question. Wilfrid's plain-speaking broke up the
air-bubble, which they had so carefully blown, and in which they had
embarked all their young hopes. They had as much as given one another a
pledge that their home likewise should be broken up.

"Are you not almost too severe a student?" Mr. Barrett happened to say
to Cornelia, the day after Wilfrid had worried her.

"Do I show the signs?" she replied.

"By no means. But last night, was it not your light that was not
extinguished till morning?"

"We soon have morning now," said Cornelia; and her face was pale as the
first hour of the dawn. "Are you not a late foot-farer, I may ask in
return?"

"Mere restlessness. I have no appetite for study. I took the liberty to
cross the park from the wood, and saw you--at least I guessed it your
light, and then I met your brother."

"Yes? you met him?"

Mr. Barrett gestured an affirmative.

"And he--did he speak?"

"He nodded. He was in some haste."

"But, then, you did not go to bed at all that night? It is almost my
turn to be lecturer, if I might expect to be listened to."

"Do you not know--or am I constitutionally different from others?" Mr.
Barrett resumed: "I can't be alone in feeling that ther