“I don’t think my own corner remains.”

“Oh! but it could be restored at once.”

“Do you think so?  No, no, Jenny my dear; cracked china is better left on the shelf out of the way, even if it could bear the move, which it can’t.”

Then Jenny understood, and advised Rosamond to bide her time, and wait till the session of parliament, when the house would be quieter; and Rosamond nodded and held her peace.

The only person who held aloof was Cecil, who would not rise to the bait when Raymond tried to exhibit Miss Bowater as a superior intellectual woman.

Unluckily, too, Jenny observed one evening at the five o’clock tea, “I hear that Mrs. Duncombe has picked up some very funny people—­a lady lecturer, who is coming to set us all to rights.”

“A wonderful pair, I hear!” said Frank.  “Mrs. Clio Tallboys, she calls herself, and a poor little husband, whom she carries about to show the superiority of her sex.”

“A Cambridge professor and a great political economist!” observed Cecil, in a low but indignant voice.

“The Yankee Cambridge!” quoth Frank.

“The American Cambridge is a distinguished university,” returned Cecil.

“Cecil is right, Master Frank,” laughed his mother; “Cam and Isis are not the only streams of learning in the world.”

“I never heard of him,” said Jenny; “he is a mere satellite to the great luminary.”

“They are worth seeing,” added Frank; “she is one of those regular American beauties one would pay to get a sight of.”

“Where did you get all this information?” asked Cecil.

“From Duncombe himself.  They met on the Righi; and nothing is more comical than to near him describe the ladies’ fraternization over female doctors and lawyers, till they rushed into each other’s arms, and the Clio promised to come down on a crusade and convert you all.”

“There are two ways of telling a story,” said Cecil.

“No wonder the gentlemen quake!” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“I don’t,” said Frank, boyishly.

“Because you’ve no wife to take you in hand,” retorted Jenny.

“For my part,” said Mrs. Poynsett, “I can’t see what women want.  I have always had as many rights as I could exercise.”

“Ah! but we are not all ladies of the manor,” said Jenny, “nor do we all drive coaches.”

“I observe,” said Cecil, with dignity, “that there is supposed to be a license to laugh at Mrs. Duncombe and whatever she does.”

“She would do better to mind her children,” said Frank.

“Children!  Has she children?” broke in Anne and Rosamond, both at once.

“Didn’t you know it?” said Jenny.

“No, indeed!  I didn’t think her the sort of woman,” said Rosamond.  “What does she do with them?”

“Drops them in the gutter,” said Frank.  “Literally, as I came home, I heard a squeak, and found a child flat in a little watercourse.  I picked it out, and the elder one told me it was Ducky Duncombe, or some such word.  Its little boots had holes in them, mother; its legs were purple, and there was a fine smart foreign woman flirting round the corner with young Hornblower.”