"I can tell her you think so, of course," says the Professor, drily.
"I will say no more"—very freezingly. "You know as well as I do what it is your duty to say to your daughter. What you will decide to say, I do not know." And premonitory rustles end in a move to the door.
"You can tell her to come in now—if you like." The Professor won't show too vivid an interest. It isn't as if the matter related to a Scythian war-chariot, or a gold ornament from a prehistoric tomb, or variæ lectiones.
"At least, Septimus," says the apex of the departing skirts, "you will remember what is due to yourself and your family—I am nobody—so far as not to encourage the girl in resisting her mother's authority." And, receiving no reply, departs, and is heard on the landing rejecting insufficient reasons why the drugget will not lay flat. And presently issuing a mandate to an upper landing:
"Your father wishes to speak to you in his library. I wish you to go." The last words not to seem to abdicate as Queen Consort.
Lætitia isn't a girl whom we find new charms in after making her mother's acquaintance. You know how some young people would be passable enough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their identity by other members of their family. You know the sister you thought was a beauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade. But it's a great shame in Tishy's case, because we do honestly believe her seeming da capo of her mother is more skirts than anything else. We credit their respective apices with different dispositions, although (yes, it's quite true what you say) we don't see exactly from what corner of the Professor's his daughter got her better one. He's all very well, but....
Anyhow, we are sorry for Tishy now, as she comes uneasily into the library to be "spoken to." She comes in buttoning a glove and saying, "Yes, papa." She was evidently just going out—probably arrested by the voices in the library.
"Well, my dear, your mother wishes me to speak to you.... H'm! h'm! By-the-bye," he interrupts himself, "it really is a very extraordinary thing, but it's just like work-people. A man spends all his life laying carpets, and the minute he lays mine it's too big or too small."