‘Oh, you should have heard Jane!’ cries Betty, going off into one of her peals of laughter. ‘When Aunt Jemima had reduced her to a rage, she came in weeping to me. All the forlorn hopes fall back upon me.’
‘True, even this poor old forlorn one,’ says Dom promptly, seizing his opportunity to lift his head from her gown to drop it upon her lap.
After which there is a scuffle.
‘Oh, never mind Dom!’ says Susan impatiently. ‘What did Jane say to you about the cup?’
‘She said——Go away, Dom.’
‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ says Dom, with an aggrieved air. ‘It’s an aspersion on my character, Susan. You don’t believe this, do you?’
‘She said,’ goes on Betty, very properly taking no notice of the interruption: ‘“Law, Miss Betty, miss, did ye iver hear the like o’ that? Did ye iver hear such a row about nothin’?”’
‘“It wasn’t about nothing,” I said; “because you know how even father valued that cup, though an uglier thing I never saw in my life.”’
‘“Fegs, I don’t know what ye call anythin’,” said Jane (she was crying all the time; you know how she can roar); “but yer aunt herself tould me that that cup is a hundhred years ould if a day, an’ wid that to make sich a screech over it! Faix, it must have bin rotten wid age, miss; an’ no wondher it come to bits in me hands.”’
They are all delighted with the story.