"Why—he said so little——"
"But he gave you some impression?"
"Oh, of course. He spoke as if she was a person—not a female you know—a person!"
"A person isn't a female—when? Eh, missy?" This requires a little consideration, and gets it. The result, when it comes, seems good in its author's eyes.
"When they sit down. When you ask them to, you know. In the parlour, I mean—not the hall. They might be a female then."
"Did he mean a lady?"
"And take milk and no sugar? And pull her gloves on to go? And leave cards turned up at the corner? Oh no—not a lady, certainly!"
As she makes these instructive distinctions, Miss Sally is kneeling on a hassock before a mature fire, which will tumble down and spoil presently. When it does it will be time to resort to that hearth-broom, and restrict combustion with collected caput-mortuum of Derby-Brights, selected, twenty-seven shillings. Till then, Sally, who deserted the Major's knee just as she asked what Mr. Fenwick was to stop in, is at liberty to roast, and does so with undisturbed gravity. The Major is becoming conscious of a smell like Joan of Arc at the beginning of the entertainment, when her mother comes in on a high moral platform, and taxes her with singeing, and dissolves the parliament, and rings to take away breakfast, and forecasts an open window the minute the Major has gone.
Sally doesn't wait for the open window, but as one recalled to the active duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes a cold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on—to see if the post is coming, which is absurd—and comes back braced. But though she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mother marrying Mr. Fenwick in the Major's dear silly old head, she keeps on a steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind Nightingale he knew could possibly have been; and whether she couldn't be got at even now. It was
such a pity he couldn't have a tip given about him who he was. If he were once started, he would soon run; she was sure of that. But did he want to run?—that was a point to consider. Did he really forget as much as he said he did? How came he not to have forgotten his languages he was so fluent with? And how about his book-keeping? And that curious way he had of knowing about places, and then looking puzzled when asked when he had been there. When they talked about Klondyke the other day, for instance, and he seemed to know so much about it.... But, then, see how he grasped his head, and ruffled his hair, and shut his eyes, and clenched his teeth over his efforts to recollect whether he had really been there himself, or only read it all in the "Century" or "Atlantic Monthly"! Surely he was in earnest then.