“Lawk-a-mussy me!” screamed the horrified Mrs. Banks. “We went for a nice little stroll,” continued the graceless Mr. Green, “and then I s’pose she found it was later than she thought, and she began to make a fuss.” “Me, at my time o’ life?” demanded the indignant Mrs. Banks of the audience. “You _did_ make a fuss,” said Mr. Green. “O’ course I made a fuss when I found out how I had been deceived. You were here when he came, Mrs. Church, weren’t you?” “I would rather not say anything about it,” said the housekeeper, freezingly. “I insist upon your speaking,” said the old lady, getting very red in the face. “Well, I don’t know much about it,” said the housekeeper, looking round appealingly. “I heard you speaking to somebody at the door in a low voice.” “It wasn’t a low voice,” interrupted Mrs. Banks, sharply. “Well, I couldn’t hear what you were saying, and then when you went outside and I asked you whether you were going home you said ‘yes,’ didn’t you?” “Are you sure she said she was going home?” said Mrs. Banks’s brother-in-law, in an awful voice, as the old lady sank back in her chair. “Yes,” said Mrs. Church, with a fine show of reluctance. There was a dead silence, during which they all heard the smelling-salts drop. “If this man said Captain Barber was ill at Mapleden, why didn’t you tell me?” continued Mrs. Church, in a mildly aggrieved voice. “I think if anybody ought to have known, it should have been me.” “It’s all a fuss about nothing,” said Mr. Green, brazenly. “She stayed out a bit too late, and then wanted to put it all on to me.” A good Samaritan picked up the smelling-salts and held them to the victim’s nose, while her scandalized relatives discussed the situation in hurried whispers. The brother-in-law eyed her with bewildered disapproval, and in the disjointed accents peculiar to surprise was heard to make use of the words “friskiness” and “gallivanting” and “old enough to know better.” Her relatives’ remarks, however, caused Mrs. Banks comparatively little pain. Her attention was fully taken up by the housekeeper, in whose satisfied smile she saw a perfect recognition of the reasons for her action of the previous evening. She got up from her chair, and with a stateliness which her brother-in-law thought somewhat misplaced, took her daughter’s arm, and slowly left the room, her departure being the signal for a general breakup. By twos and threes the company drifted slowly up the road in her wake, while Captain Barber, going in the other direction, accompanied Captain Nibletts and party as far as the schooner, in order that he might have the opportunity of saying a few well-chosen words to Mr. Green on the subject of precipitancy. “If it ’adn’t been for me tipping ’im the wink, so as to let him know what line ’e was to go on when I came down, where should I ’ave been?” he demanded of Captain Nibletts. And that astonished mariner, with a helpless shake of his head, gave it up. CHAPTER XV.