Mrs. Baker of Laurel Villa held up her hands so that the lace mitts came together like the fingers of a figure of grief upon a tomb. "What a dreadful girl!" she said, looking up as if to ask Heaven to support her.
Mr. Davenant Carter remembered his position as a county magistrate. Also he desired to stand well with all his neighbours.
"Madam," he said to Mrs. Baker, in the impressive tone in which he addressed public meetings, "I regret exceedingly that you should have been put to this trouble. I think that for the future you will have no reason to complain of my daughter. Will you allow me to conduct you across the policies by the shorter way? Cissy, go to bed at once, and stop there till I bid you get up! That will teach you to take the law into you own hands when your father is a Justice of the Peace!"
This he said in such a stern voice that Mrs. Baker was much flattered and quite appeased. He walked with the lady to the small gate in the boundary wall, opened it with his private key, and last of all shook hands with his visitor with the most distinguished courtesy. Some day he meant to stand for the burgh and her brothers were well-to-do grocers in the town.
"Sir," she said in parting, "I hope you will not be too severe with the young lady. Perhaps after all she was only a trifle impulsive!"
"Discipline must be maintained," said Mr. Davenant Carter sternly, closing, however, at the same time the eyelid most remote from Mrs. Baker of Laurel Villa.
"It shows what a humbug pa is," muttered Cissy, as she went upstairs; "he knows very well it is bed-time anyway. I don't believe he is angry one bit!"
When her father came in, he looked over at his wife. I am afraid he deliberately winked, though in the interests of morality I trust I may be mistaken. For how could a Justice of the Peace and a future Member of Parliament demean himself to wink?
"Jane," he said to Mrs. Carter, "what does Cissy like most of all for supper?"
"A little bit of chicken and bread-sauce done with broiled bacon—at least I think so, dear—why do you ask?"