'Leaping, Sylvana, be decent; I never leap.'
'Leaping into notoriety, mother, if you choose to patronise a young woman of equivocal origin.'
'My dear,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, 'you entirely forget who I am.'
'Not at all. It is because you are a Tomkin-Jones that I am constrained to look after you. There was a peacock in Bedfont that got into the lodge and spread its tail before the kitchen fire, and it blazed like a Catherine-wheel. The funny thing is that all that summer the peacock continued to bristle up and spread the bare and charred stumps, wholly unconscious that it was making itself ridiculous. Take care, mother, that you have feathers before you make a spread.'
'You forget what is due to me,' said the widow angrily.
'I am solicitous for you. Have you ever asked Winefred, or her father, what was her mother's maiden name?'
'No.'
'But I have.'
'My dear!'
'I asked Winefred, and she flared up and refused an answer. I next asked Mr. Holwood, and he became so nervous and bewildered as to be speechless. That tells its own tale—it does not look nice.'