“No more,” he cried briefly, with a slight bend of his head.  “Lulu meant no harm,” he added, and smiled at Lulu.

There was a moment’s silence into which Monona injected a loud “Num, num, num-my-num,” as if she were the burden of an Elizabethan lyric.  She seemed to close the incident.  But the burden was cut off untimely.  There was, her father reminded her portentously, company in the parlour.

“When the bell rang, I was so afraid something had happened to Di,” said Ina sighing.

“Let’s see,” said Di’s father.  “Where is little daughter to-night?”

He must have known that she was at Jenny Plow’s at a tea party, for at noon they had talked of nothing else; but this was his way.  And Ina played his game, always.  She informed him, dutifully.

“Oh, ho,” said he, absently.  How could he be expected to keep his mind on these domestic trifles.

“We told you that this noon,” said Lulu.

He frowned, disregarded her.  Lulu had no delicacy.

“How much is salmon the can now?” he inquired abruptly—­this was one of his forms of speech, the can, the pound, the cord.

His partner supplied this information with admirable promptness.  Large size, small size, present price, former price—­she had them all.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Deacon.  “That is very nearly salmoney, isn’t it?”

“Herbert!” his Ina admonished, in gentle, gentle reproach.  Mr. Deacon punned, organically.  In talk he often fell silent and then asked some question, schemed to permit his vice to flourish.  Mrs. Deacon’s return was always automatic:  “Herbert!”

“Whose Bert?” he said to this.  “I thought I was your Bert.”

She shook her little head.  “You are a case,” she told him.  He beamed upon her.  It was his intention to be a case.

Lulu ventured in upon this pleasantry, and cleared her throat.  She was not hoarse, but she was always clearing her throat.

“The butter is about all gone,” she observed.  “Shall I wait for the butter-woman or get some creamery?”

Mr. Deacon now felt his little jocularities lost before a wall of the matter of fact.  He was not pleased.  He saw himself as the light of his home, bringer of brightness, lightener of dull hours.  It was a pretty role.  He insisted upon it.  To maintain it intact, it was necessary to turn upon their sister with concentrated irritation.

“Kindly settle these matters without bringing them to my attention at meal-time,” he said icily.

Lulu flushed and was silent.  She was an olive woman, once handsome, now with flat, bluish shadows under her wistful eyes.  And if only she would look at her brother Herbert and say something.  But she looked in her plate.

“I want some honey,” shouted the child, Monona.

“There isn’t any, Pet,” said Lulu.