“Why not, dear Mrs. Poynsett? How nice it would be to see you in your own corner again!”
“I don’t think my own corner remains.”
“Oh! but it could be restored at once.”
“Do you think so? No, no, Jenny my dear; cracked china is better left on the shelf out of the way, even if it could bear the move, which it can’t.”
Then Jenny understood, and advised Rosamond to bide her time, and wait till the session of parliament, when the house would be quieter; and Rosamond nodded and held her peace.
The only person who held aloof was Cecil, who would not rise to the bait when Raymond tried to exhibit Miss Bowater as a superior intellectual woman.
Unluckily, too, Jenny observed one evening at the five o’clock tea, “I hear that Mrs. Duncombe has picked up some very funny people—a lady lecturer, who is coming to set us all to rights.”
“A wonderful pair, I hear!” said Frank. “Mrs. Clio Tallboys, she calls herself, and a poor little husband, whom she carries about to show the superiority of her sex.”
“A Cambridge professor and a great political economist!” observed Cecil, in a low but indignant voice.
“The Yankee Cambridge!” quoth Frank.