I was stepping forward to say that I would do nothing of the kind, when the doctor stopped me by a signal, as much as to say that the quarrel was wide enough without me.  He stood with his back against the great arched window flooded with the yellow light of the setting sun, a little black figure in high relief, with a face of parchment.  And he took a pinch of snuff before he spoke.

“I am here py Mr. Carvel’s orters, sir,” said he, “and py tose alone vill I leaf.”

And this is how the Chippendale piece was broke, which you, my children, and especially Bess, admire so extravagantly.  It stood that day behind the doctor, and my uncle, making a violent move to get by, struck it, and so it fell with a great crash lengthwise on the landing; and the wonderful vases Mr. Carroll had given my grandfather rolled down the stairs and lay crushed at the bottom.  Withal he had spoken so quietly, Dr. Leiden possessed a temper drawn from his Teutonic ancestors.  With his little face all puckered, he swore so roundly at my uncle in some lingo he had got from his father,—­High German or Low German,—­I know not what, that Grafton and his wife were glad enough to pick their way amongst the broken bits of glass and china, to the hall again.  Dr. Leiden shook his fist at their retreating persons, saying that the Sabbath was no day to do murder.

I followed them with the pretence of picking up what was left of the ornaments.  What between anger against the doctor and Mrs. Willis, and fright and chagrin at the fall of the Chippendale piece, my aunt was in such a state of nervous flurry that she bade the ashy Scipio call her chairmen, and vowed, in a trembling voice, she would never again enter a house where that low-bred German was to be found.  But my Uncle Grafton was of a different nature.  He deemed defeat but a postponement of the object he wished to gain, and settled himself in the library with a copy of “Miller on the Distinction of Ranks in Society.”  He appeared at supper suave as ever, gravely concerned as to his father’s health, which formed the chief topic between us.  He gave me to understand that he would take the green room until the old gentleman was past danger.  Not a word, mind you, of Dr. Leiden, nor did my uncle express a wish to go into the sick-room, from which even I was forbid.  Nay, the next morning he met the doctor in the hall and conversed with him at some length over the case as though nothing had occurred between them.

While my Uncle Grafton was in the house I had opportunity of marking the intimacy which existed between him and the rector of St. Anne’s.  The latter swung each evening the muffled knocker, and was ushered on tiptoe across the polished floor to the library where my uncle sat in state.  It was often after supper before the rector left, and coming in upon them once I found wine between them and empty decanters on the board, and they fell silent as I passed the doorway.