“Oh, children, children!” protested Mrs. Blair, wearily. “Do give us a little peace!”
“Well, she began it,” said Chad.
Connie was eating savagely, but she whirled on Chad, speaking with difficulty because her mouth was filled with food:
“You shut up, will you?”
Chad laughed with a contempt almost theatrical, waved his hand lightly and said:
“Run away, little girl, run away.”
Mrs. Blair asked the judge why he did not correct his children, and though the sigh he gave expressed the hopelessness, as it seemed to him, of bringing the two younger members of his train into anything like decorous behavior, he laid his knife and fork in his plate.
“This must cease,” he said. “It is scandalous. One might conclude that you were the children of some family in Lighttown.”
“It is very trying,” said Mrs. Blair, acquiescing in her husband’s reproof. “They are just like fire and tow.” She said this quite impersonally and then turned to Connie: “If you can’t behave yourself, I’ll have to send you from the table.”
“That’s it!” wailed Connie. “That’s it! Blame everything on to me!”