is sister-in-law:--

"It's about time to perform the ceremony of the evening, isn't it,
Ella, and drink that small boy's health?"

"By all manner of means. I'm all for the observance of ancient forms
and ceremonies. You can never be sure how much mayn't lie at the bottom
of them, and it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers.
You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"--She took a grape skin
from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.--"So,
for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though
the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the
backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a
piebald; and bless my neighbour devoutly if he sneezes."

At the commencement of this harangue she met her brother-in-law's
rather depreciative scrutiny with her bold little stare--in his present
mood Ormiston found her vivacity tedious, though he was usually willing
enough to laugh at her extravagancies--then she whipped Julius in with
a side glance, and concluded with her round eyes set on Dr. Knott's
rough-hewn and weather-beaten countenance.

"I'm afraid you are disgracefully superstitious, Mrs. Ormiston," the
latter remarked.

She was a feather-headed chatterbox, he reflected; but her chatter
served to occupy the time. And the doctor was by no means anxious the
time should pass too rapidly. He felt slightly self-contemptuous; but
in good truth he would be glad to put away some few glasses of sound
port before administering the aforementioned facer to Captain Ormiston.

"Superstitious?" she returned. "Well I trust my superstition is not
chronic, but nicely intermittent like all the rest of my many virtues.
Charity begins at home, you know, and I would not like to keep any of
the poor, dear creatures on guard too long for fear of tiring them out.
But I give every one of them a turn, Dr. Knott, I assure you."

"And that's more than most of us do," he said, smiling rather savagely.
"The majority of my acquaintance have a handsome power of
self-restraint in the practice of virtue."

"And I'm the happy exception! Well, now that's an altogether pretty
speech," Mrs. Ormiston cried, laughing. "But to return to the matter in
hand, to this hero of a baby---- I dote on babies, Dr. Knott. I've one
of my own of six months old, and she's a charming child I assure you."

"I don't doubt that for an instant, having the honour of knowing her
mother.