"There's no way of defending a lady in these Godforsaken days.
Why, I remember when I was a boy, my poor father--God bless him!--you recollect him, don't you Fanny ?--never used a walking stick in his life and could read print without glasses at ninety--" "Making love to the dressmaker," pursued Jimmy, whose righteous anger refused to be turned aside from its end.
"Don't you think, Cousin Fanny," whispered Pussy, "that Gabriella had better leave the room ?" "Gabriella?
Why, how on earth can we spare her ?" Mrs.Carr whispered back rather nervously.

Then, beneath Pussy's compelling glance, she added timidly: "Hadn't you better go, darling, and see what the children are doing ?" "They are playing in the laundry," replied Gabriella reassuringly.

"I told Dolly not to let them go out of her sight." "She knows so much already for her age," murmured Mrs.Carr apologetically to Pussy.
"I don't know what Mr.Wrenn will think of your staying, dear," said Pussy, smiling archly at the girl.

"Mr.Wrenn, I was just saying that I didn't know what you would think of Gabriella's staying in the room." Jimmy's large handsome face, with its look of perpetual innocence--the incorruptible innocence of a man who has never imagined anything--turned helplessly in the direction of his wife.

All things relating to propriety came, he felt instinctively, within the natural sphere of woman, and to be forced, on the spur of the moment, to decide a delicate question of manners, awoke in him the dismay of one who sees his accustomed prop of authority beginning to crumble.