Mr. Peartree laughed rather loudly, and rather like a human being, at the word "snakes." Albert Benbow's flashes of humour, indeed, seemed to surprise him, if only for an instant, out of his attitudinarianism.
Clara smiled, flattered by the power of her husband to reveal the humanity of the parson.
"Albert's so good with children," she said. "He always knows exactly..." She stopped, leaving what he knew exactly to the listeners' imagination.
Uncle Albert and George could be heard scuffling in the hall.
Auntie Hamps rose with a gentle sigh, saying:
"I suppose we ought to join the others."
Her social sense, which was pretty well developed, had at last prevailed.
The sisters Maggie and Clara, one in light and the other in dark green, walked out of the room. Maggie's face had already stiffened into mute constraint, and Clara's into self-importance, at the prospect of meeting the general company.
III
Auntie Hamps held back, and Edwin at once perceived from the conspiratorial glance in her splendid eyes that in suggesting a move she had intended to deceive her fellow-conspirator in life, Clara. But Auntie Hamps could not live without chicane. And she was happiest when she had superimposed chicane upon chicane in complex folds.