I rang.
Phil, I saw, was looking annoyed. He disliked Maltby Phar, openly disliked him; so I felt certain—I was perhaps rather hoping—that he would take this opportunity to escape. With Phil I was never then entirely at ease; but in those days I was wholly so with Maltby. Miss Goucher answered my summons in person, and I suggested a sauterne cup for my friends. Phil frowned on the suggestion, but Maltby beamed. The ayes had it, and Miss Goucher, who had remained neutral, withdrew. It was Phil's chance; yet he surprised me by settling back and refilling his pipe.
"When you came, Mr. Phar," he said, his tone withdrawing toward formality, "we were discussing the education of Susan."
"Then I came just in time!" cried Maltby.
"For what?" I queried.
"I may prevent a catastrophe. If you're really going to see this thing through, Boz"—his name for me—"for God's sake do a little clear thinking first! Don't drift. Don't flounder. Don't wallow. Scrap all your musty, inbred prejudices once for all, and see that at least one kid on this filthy old planet gets a plain, honest, unsentimentalized account of what she is and what the world is. If you can bring yourself to do that, Susan will be unique. She will be the first educated woman in America."
"'What she is and what the world is,'" repeated Phil, slowly. "What is the world, may I ask? And what is Susan?"
There was a felt tenseness in the moment; the hush before battle. We leaned forward a little from our easy-chairs, and no one of us noticed that Susan had slipped noiselessly to the window seat by the opened library window which gave upon the terrace. But there, as we later discovered, she was; and there, for the present silently, she remained.
"The world," began Maltby Phar sententiously, "is a pigsty."
"Very well," interrupted Phil; "I'll grant you that to start with. What follows?"