“I should have done the same had you been there.”
“Indeed!” ironically; “I did not know how far you had graduated in the Rights of Women. So you invited these people?”
“Then the whole host of children was poured in on us, and everything imaginable done to interrupt, and render everything rational impossible. I know it was Rosamond’s contrivance, she looked so triumphant, dressed in an absurd fancy dress, and her whole train doing nothing but turning me into ridicule, and Mrs. Tallboys too. Whatever you choose to call her, you cannot approve of a stranger and foreigner being insulted here. It is that about which I care—not myself; I have seen none of them since, nor shall I do so until a full apology has been made to my guest and to myself.”
“You have not told me the offence.”
“In the first place, there was an absurd form of Christmas-tree, to which one was dragged blindfold, and sedulously made ridiculous; and I—I had a dust-pan and brush. Yes, I had, in mockery of our endeavours to purify that unhappy street.”
“I should have taken it as a little harmless fun,” said Raymond. “Depend on it, it was so intended.”
“What, when Mrs. Tallboys had a padlock and key? I see you are determined to laugh at it all. Most likely they consulted you beforehand.”
“Cecil, I cannot have you talk such nonsense. Is this all you have to complain of?”
“No. There was a charade on the word Blockhead, where your brother Charles and the two De Lanceys caricatured what they supposed to be Mrs. Tallboys’ doctrines.”
“How did she receive it?”