I was indignant, quite artlessly indignant I fear, with the college authorities, barbarously irresponsible, as it struck me; for when I broke out about them to poor Mother she surprised me (though I confess she had sometimes surprised me before), by her deep fatalism.  “Oh, I suppose they don’t pretend not to take their students at the young people’s own risk:  they can scarcely pretend to control their affections!” she wonderfully said; she seemed almost shocked, moreover, that I could impute either to Father or to herself any disposition to control Peggy’s.  It was one of the few occasions of my life on which I’ve suffered irritation from poor Mother; and yet I’m now not sure, after all, that she wasn’t again but at her old game (even then, for she has certainly been so since) of protecting poor Father, by feigning a like flaccidity, from the full appearance, not to say the full dishonor, of his failure ever to meet a domestic responsibility.  It came over me that there would be absolutely nobody to meet this one, and my own peculiar chance glimmered upon me therefore on the spot.  I can’t retrace steps and stages; suffice it that my opportunity developed and broadened, to my watching eyes, with each precipitated consequence of the wretched youth’s arrival.

He proved, without delay, an infant in arms; an infant, either, according to circumstances, crowing and kicking and clamoring for sustenance, or wailing and choking and refusing even the bottle, to the point even, as I’ve just seen in New York, of imminent convulsions.  The “arms” most appropriate to his case suddenly announced themselves, in fine, to our general consternation, as Eliza’s:  but it was at this unnatural vision that my heart indeed leaped up.  I was beforehand even with Lorraine; she was still gaping while, in three bold strokes, I sketched to her our campaign.  “I take command—­the others are flat on their backs.”  I save little pathetic Peg, even in spite of herself; though her just resentment is really much greater than she dares, poor mite, recognize (amazing scruple!).  By which I mean I guard her against a possible relapse.  I save poor Mother—­that is I rid her of the deadly Eliza—­forever and a day!  Despised, rejected, misunderstood, I nevertheless intervene, in its hour of dire need, as the good genius of the family; and you, dear little quaint thing, I take advantage of the precious psychological moment to whisk you off to Europe.  We’ll take Peg with us for a year’s true culture; she wants a year’s true culture pretty badly, but she doesn’t, as it turns out, want Mr. Goward a ‘speck.’  And I’ll do it all in my own way, before they can recover breath; they’ll recover it—­if we but give them time—­to bless our name; but by that moment we shall have struck for freedom!”