He laughed with unnecessary abandonment.  The sensitive young women wanted no other schooling to recover themselves.  In a moment they were seen leaning back and contemplating him amusedly, as if he had been the comic spectacle, and were laughing for a wager.  There are few things so sour as the swallowing of one’s own forced laugh.  Wilfrid got it down, and commenced a lecture to fill the awkward pause.  His sisters maintained the opera-stall posture of languid attention, contesting his phrases simply with their eyebrows, and smiling.  He was no match for them while they chose to be silent:  and indeed if the business of life were conducted in dumb show, women would beat men hollow.  They posture admirably.  In dumb show they are equally good for attack and defence.  But this is not the case in speech.  So, when Arabella explained that their hope was to see Mrs. Chump go that day, owing to the rigorous exclusion of all amusement and the outer world from the house, Wilfrid regained his superior footing and made his lecture tell.  In the middle of it, there rang a cry from the doorway that astonished even him, it was so powerfully Irish.

“The lady you have called down is here,” said Arabella’s cold glance, in answer to his.

They sat with folded hands while Wilfrid turned to Mrs. Chump, who advanced, a shock of blue satin to the eye, crying, on a jump:  “Is ut Mr. Wilfrud?”

“It’s I, ma’am.”  Wilfrid bowed, and the censorious ladies could not deny that, his style was good, if his object was to be familiar.  And if that was his object, he was paid for it.  A great thick kiss was planted on his cheek, with the motto:  “Harm to them that thinks ut.”

Wilfrid bore the salute like a man who presumes that he is flattered.

“And it’s you!” said Mrs. Chump.  “I was just off.  I’m packed, and bonnutted, and ready for a start; becas, my dear, where there’s none but women, I don’t think it natural to stop.  You’re splendud!  How a little fella like Pole could go and be father to such a mighty big son, with your bit of moustache and your blue eyes!  Are they blue or a bit of grey in ’em?” Mrs. Chump peered closely.  “They’re kill’n’, let their colour be annyhow.  And I that knew ye when ye were no bigger than my garter!  Oh, sir! don’t talk of ut; I’ll be thinkin’, of my coffin.  Ye’re glad to see me?  Say, yes.  Do!”

“Very glad,” quoth Wilfrid.

“Upon your honour, now?”

“Upon my honour!”

“My dears” (Mrs. Chump turned to the ladies), “I’ll stop; and just thank your brother for’t, though you can’t help being garls.”