cended to the dining-room, but though the meal was served, did
not take their seats: they stood about, in a kind of anxious silence.
This lasted for several minutes; then, heavy footsteps were heard
trampling overhead: these persisted, but did not seem to advance, and
at length there was a loud, impatient shout of: "Maisie!"

Both ladies were perceptibly flurried. "He can't find something," said
Miss Isabella in a stage-whisper; while Mrs. Shepherd, taking the front
of her dress in both hands, set out for the stairs with the short,
clumsy jerks which, in a woman, pass for running.

A minute or two later the origin of the fluster came in, looking, it
must be confessed, not much more amiable than his voice had been: he
was extremely pale, too, his blue eyes had hollow rings round them, and
there were tired wrinkles on his forehead. However he offered Laura a
friendly hand which she took with her soul in her eyes.

"Well, and so this is the young lady fresh from the halls of learning,
is it?" he asked, after a mumbled grace, as he carved a rather naked
mutton-bone: the knife caught in the bone; he wrenched it free with an
ill-natured tweak. "And what do they teach you at college, miss, eh?"
he went on. "French? ... Greek? ... Latin? How goes it? INFANDUM,
REGINA, JUBES RENOVARE DOLOREM--isn't that the way of it? And then ...
let me see! It's so long since I went to school, you know."

"TROJANAS UT OPES ET LAMENTABILE REGNUM ERUERINT DANAI," said Laura,
almost blind with pride and pleasure.

"Well, well, well!" he exclaimed, in what seemed tremendous surprise;
but, even as she spoke, his thoughts were swept away; for he had taken
up a mustard-pot and found it empty. "Yes, yes, here we are again! Not
a scrap of mustard on the table. "--His voice was angrily resigned.

"With MUTTON, Robby dear?" ventured Mrs. Shepherd, with the utmost
humbleness.

"With mutton if I choose!" he retorted violently. "WILL you, Maisie, be
kind enough to allow me to know my own tastes best, and not dictate to
me what I shall eat?"

But Mrs. Shepherd, murmuring: "Oh dear! it's that dreadful girl," had
already made a timid spring at the bell.

"Poor Robby ... so rushed again!" said Isabella in a reproachful tone.

"And while she's here she may bring the water and the glasses as well,"
snarled the master of the house, who had run a flaming eye over the
table.

"Tch, tch, tch!" said Mrs. Shepherd, with so little spirit that Laura
felt qui