"Make your father eat his lunch, Lætitia. We cannot be late again this afternoon." Whereon every one ate too fast; and Sally felt very glad the Professor had given her such a big slice of tongue, as she knew she wouldn't have the courage to have a second supply, if offered, much less ask for it.
"Do you hear, papa? I'm to make you eat your lunch," says Lætitia; and her mother murmurs "That's right; make him," as though he were an anaconda in the snake-house, and her daughter a keeper who could go inside the cage. Lætitia then adds briefly that Mrs. Nightingale is going to marry Fenwick.
"Ha! Mercy on us!" says the Professor quite vaguely, and, even more so, adds: "Chicken—chicken—chicken—chicken—chicken!" Though what he says next is more intelligible, it is unfortunate and ill-chosen: "And who is Mrs. Nightingale?"
The sphinx is mobility itself compared with Mrs. Wilson's intense preservation of her status quo. The import of which is that the Professor's blunders are things of everyday occurrence—every minute, rather. She merely says to Europe, "You see," and leaves that continent to deal with the position. Sally, who always gets impatient with the Wilson family, except the Professor himself
and Lætitia—though she is trying sometimes—now ignores Europe, and gets the offender into order on her own account.
"Why, Professor dear, don't you know Mrs. Nightingale's my mother? I'm Sally Nightingale, you know!"
"I'm not at all sure that I did, my dear. I think I thought you were Sally Something-else. My mind is very absent sometimes. You must forgive me. Sally Nightingale! To be sure!"
"Never mind, Professor dear!" But the Professor still looks vexed at his blunder. So Sally says in confirmation, "I've forgiven you. Shake hands!" And doesn't make matters much better, for her action seems unaccountable to the absent-minded one, who says, "Why?" first, and then, "Oh, ah, yes—I see. Shake hands, certainly!" On which the Sphinx, at the far end of the table, wondered whether the ancient Phœnicians were rude, under her breath.
"I'm so absent, Sally Nightingale, that I didn't even know your father wasn't living." Lætitia looks uncomfortable, and when Sally merely says, "I never saw my father," thinks to herself what a very discreet girl Sally is. Naturally she supposes Sally to be a wise enough child to know something about her own father. But the Wilson family were not completely in the dark about an unsatisfactory "something queer" in Sally's extraction; so that she credits that unconscious young person with having steered herself skilfully out of shoal-waters; but she is not sure whether to class her achievement as intrepidity or cheek. She is wanted in the intelligence department before she can decide this point.
"Perhaps, if you try, Lætitia, you'll be able to make out whether your father is or is not going to eat his lunch."