ing it up. What next!" Laetitia
seems to have discovered that Sally, subjected to a fixed amused look,
is sure to develop, and maintains one; and Sally follows on:

"One has to be on an intimate footing to fall out. Besides, people
shouldn't be hen's sons. Not if they expect that sort of thing!"

"Which sort?"

"You know perfectly well, Tishy dear! And they shouldn't be worthy,
either, people shouldn't. I'm not at all sure it isn't his worthiness,
just as much as his mother. I _could_ swallow his mother, if it came
to that!"

Laetitia, without relaxing the magnetism of her look, is replacing
a defective string. But a stimulating word will keep Sally up to the
mark. It would be a pity she should die down, having got so far.

"Not at all sure _what_ isn't his worthiness!"

"Now, Tishy dear, what nonsense! As if you didn't understand! You may
just as well be penetrating outright, if you're going to go on like
that. All I know is that, worthiness or no, if Dr. Vereker expects
I'm going to put him on a quarrelling footing, he's mistaken, and the
sooner he gives up the idea the better. I suppose he'll be wanting me
to cherish him next."

And then what does that irritating Laetitia Wilson do but say suddenly,
"I'm quite ready for the scherzo, dear, if you are." Just as if Sally
had been talking all this for her own private satisfaction and
amusement! And she knew perfectly well, Laetitia did, that she had been
eliciting, and that she meant to wait a day or two, and begin again
ever so far on, and make believe Sally had said heaps of things. And
Sally had really said nothing--_nothing_!

However, Miss Wilson was certainly a very fine violin figure, and
really striking in long sostenuto notes, with a fine throat and
handsome fingers on her left hand with broad bones, and a handsome
wrist on her bowing-arm where it was wanted. Only now, of course, she
hadn't got her Egyptian bracelet that looked so well, and her hair
wasn't done in a coronet, but only just twisted up anyhow. Besides,
when it's a difficult scherzo and you take it quick, your appearance
of having the concentration of Bonaparte and Julius Caesar, and the
alacrity of a wild cat, doesn't bring out your good points. Give us
an _andante maestoso_ movement, or a _diminuendo rallentando_ that
reaches the very climax and acme of slowness itself just before the
applause comes! It was rather as a meditation in contrasts, though,
that Sally thought thus to herself;