The thing was marked enough then, and Mrs. Tappitt retired in muffled triumph,—retired when she had made all things easy for the simplest ceremony of dressing.
"Just sponge your face, my dear," she said, "and put on your dressing-gown, and come down for half an hour or so."
"I'm all right now," said Tappitt.
"Oh! quite so;—but I wouldn't go to the trouble of much dressing." Then she left him, descended the stairs, and entered the parlour among her daughters. When there she could not abstain from one blast of the trumpet of triumph. "Well, girls," she said, "it's all settled, and we shall be in Torquay now before the winter."
"No!" said Augusta.
"That'll be a great change," said Martha.
"In Torquay before the winter!" said Cherry. "Oh, mamma, how clever you have been!"
"And now your papa is coming down, and you should thank him for what he's doing for you. It's all for your sake that he's doing it."
Mr. Tappitt crept into the room, and when he had taken his seat in his accustomed arm-chair, the girls went up to him and kissed him. Then they thanked him for his proposed kindness in taking them out of the brewery.
"Oh, papa, it is so jolly!" said Cherry.