h he tapped until Mrs. Chump
cried out, "Oh! if ye're not like a postman, Pole; and d'ye think ye've
got a letter for a chick inside there?"

This allusion scared Mr. Pole from the egg. He quitted the table,
muttering, "Business! business!" and went to the library.

When he was gone Mrs. Chump gave a cry to know where Braintop was,
but, forgetting him immediately, turned to the ladies and ejaculated,
"Broth'm. It's just brothin' he wants. Broth, I say, for anny man that
won't eat his chop or his egg. And, my dears, now, what do ye say to
me for bringing him home to ye? I expect to be thanked, I do; and then
we'll broth Pole together, till he's lusty as a prize-ox, and capers
like a monkey."

Wretched woman! that could not see the ruin she had inflicted--that
could not imagine how her bitter breath cut against those sensitive
skins! During a short pause little Mrs. Lupin trotted to the door, and
shot through it, in a paroxysm.

Then Wilfrid's voice was heard. He leaned against a corner of the
window, and spoke without directly looking at Mrs. Chump; so that she
was some time in getting to understand the preliminary, "Madam, you
must leave this house." But presently her chin dropped; and after feeble
efforts to interpose an exclamation, she sat quiet--overcome by the
deliberate gravity of his manner, and motioning despairingly with her
head, to relieve the swarm of unborn figure-less ideas suggested by his
passing speech. The ladies were ranged like tribunal shapes. It could
not be said of souls so afflicted that they felt pleasure in the scene;
but to assist in the administration of a rigorous justice is sweet to
them that are smarting. They scarcely approved his naked statement
of things when he came to Mrs. Chump's particular aspiration in the
household--viz., to take a station and the dignity of their name. The
effect he produced satisfied them that the measure was correct. Her back
gave a sharp bend, as if an eternal support had snapped. "Oh! ye hit
hard," she moaned.

"I tell you kindly that we (who, you will acknowledge, must count for
something here) do not sanction any change that revolutionizes our
domestic relations," said Wilfrid; while Mrs. Chump heaved and rolled
on the swell of the big words like an overladen boat. "You have only to
understand so much, and this--that if we resist it, as we do, you,
by continuing to contemplate it, are provoking a contest which will
probably injure neither you nor me,