"Not especially. I didn't pay much attention. As long as no bones are broken.... They won't be coming up for some time yet." There was in her voice a very clear implication of relief. The inference was that we, in this sofa-haven, should not be disturbed. Its correctness was soon manifest. No two oratorically-disposed gentlemen, well wound up, ever disturb a chat in a corner, further than mere shouting goes. And Sir Murgatroyd and the sitting member for Grime were wound up to a high pitch of agreement about what constituted an Enlightened Conservatism, and each was anxious to supply the next link in the chain of Syllogism, and get the credit of it. So they shouted against each other all the way upstairs, and only lulled very slightly when they reached the drawing-room. Mr. Brownrigg and Mr. Wraxall, on the other hand, were _aux grands éprises_ on a vital question--never mind what; nobody knew or cared!--which underlay the whole of their argument. Mr. Wraxall had been unable to permit an inference of Mr. Brownrigg's to pass unchallenged, and Mr. Brownrigg had impugned the data on which Mr. Wraxall's objections were founded. Mr. Wraxall had replied that something or other had been clearly laid down as a safe principle by Baker, and Mr. Brownrigg had pointed out that the fallacy of Baker's assumptions had been exhaustively dealt with by Smith. Mr. Wraxall had counter-pointed out that Smith's penetrating insight into everything else had led him into error in this one particular; and had laid stress upon the fact that Hopkins, the weight of whose opinion it was impossible to deny, had endorsed the opinions of Baker. Mr. Brownrigg had then become patronizing, and went so far as to warn Mr. Wraxall not to be led away by the plausibility of Hopkins. Who then, being a weak controversialist, had rashly appealed to Mr. Ramsey Tomes to countenance the authority of Hopkins. But that gentleman only gave a weighty shake to a judicial head, claiming at once profound thought in the past, and forecasting just censure to come. He feared that the insidious ratiocinations of Hopkins were a rock we all split upon in the forest of youth, and an _ignis fatuus_ to mislead the mariner in the ocean of dialectical difficulty that chequered our steps in later life.