"And if all these fat pigs of Senators," they said, "were set running like that a little oftener, why, then, they'd make better bacon!"
Master Ambrose had to work the knocker of the Academy door very hard before it was finally opened by Miss Primrose herself.
She looked flustered, and, as it seemed to Master Ambrose, a little dissipated, her face was so pasty and her eyelids so very red.
"Now, Miss Crabapple!" he cried in a voice of thunder, "What, by the Harvest of Souls, have you been doing to my daughter, Moonlove? And if she's been ill, why have we not been told, I should like to know? I've come here for an explanation, and I mean to get it."
Miss Primrose, mopping and mowing, and garrulously inarticulate, took the fuming gentleman into the parlour. But he could get nothing out of her further than disjointed murmurs about the need for cooling draughts, and the child's being rather headstrong, and a possible touch of the sun. It was clear that she was scared out of her wits, and, moreover, there was something she wished to conceal.
Master Ambrose, from his experience on the Bench, soon realized that this was a type of witness upon whom it was useless to waste his time; so he said sternly, "You are evidently unable to talk sense yourself, but perhaps some of your pupils possess that useful accomplishment. But I warn you if ... if anything happens to my daughter it is you that will be held responsible. And now, send ... let me see ... send me down Prunella Chanticleer, she's always been a sensible girl with a head on her shoulders. She'll be able to tell me what exactly is the matter with Moonlove—which is more than you seem able to do."
Miss Primrose, now almost gibbering with terror, stammered out something about "study hours," and "regularity being so desirable," and "dear Prunella's having been a little out of sorts herself recently."
But Master Ambrose repeated in a voice of thunder, "Send me Prunella Chanticleer, at once."
And standing there, stern and square, he was a rather formidable figure.
So Miss Primrose could only gibber and blink her acquiescence and promise him that "dear Prunella" should instantly be sent to him.