him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like
this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each
other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one
had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death.
Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that
those other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of
superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn't command. She wanted
nothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickering
silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and
they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance.
Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see
Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she
might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these
things wouldn't make it better--very likely they wouldn't; but at any
rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part
and her father's and Delia's, to make it worse. She told her father that
she wouldn't, as Delia put it, "want to have him" go round, and was in
some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn't seem very clear as
to what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn't
afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had
happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the
absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for
he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the
paper.

Delia also reassured her; she said she'd see to it that poppa didn't
sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn't the smallest
doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM down
there--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry
he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her
and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything
practical to say they'd arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the
sense of his daughter's having been roughly handled he derived some of
the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the
Proberts as a "body." If they were consistent with their character or
with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he
hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated
to