For Roger apparently has got quickly into his smoking-coat: at least he is here: he has heard all. Barbara and I crawl away with no more spring or backbone in us than a couple of torpid, wintery flies.
Five minutes later, "Do you wonder that we hate him?" cry I, with flaming cheeks, holding a japanned candlestick in one hand, and Sir Roger's right hand in the other.
"I do not care if he does hear me!—yes, I do, though" (giving a great jump as a door bangs close to me).
Sir Roger is looking down at me with an expression of most thorough discomfiture and silent pain in his face.
"He did not mean it, Nancy!" he says, hesitatingly, and with a sort of look of shamed wonder in his friendly eyes.
"Did not he?" (ironically).
A little pause, the position of the japanned candlestick and of Sir Roger's hand still remaining the same. "How I wish that you were my father instead!" I say with a sort of sob. He does not, as I fully expect, say, "So do I!" and I go to bed, feeling rather small, as one who has gushed, and whose gush has not been welcome to the recipient.