‘Nobody on earth could take a fancy to the twins or keep them an hour longer than necessary, and you know it, Mrs. Grubb,’ said Rhoda, who seldom minced matters; ‘and in case no one should ever have the bad manners to tell you the whole truth, I want to say here and now that you neglect everything good and sensible and practical,—all the plain, simple duties that stare you directly in the face,—and waste yourself on matters that are of no earthly use to anybody. Those children would have been missed last night if you had one drop of mother’s blood in your veins! You have three helpless children under what you are pleased to call your care’ (and here Rhoda’s lip curled so scornfully that Mrs. Grubb was tempted to stab her with a curling-pin), ‘and you went to sleep without knowing to a certainty whether they had had supper or bed! I don’t believe you are a woman at all—you are just a vague abstraction; and the only things you’ve ever borne or nursed or brooded in your life have been your miserable, bloodless little clubs and bands and unions!’ Rhoda’s eyes flashed summer lightning, her nostrils quivered, her cheeks flamed scarlet, and Mrs. Grubb sat down suddenly and heavily on the front stairs and gasped for breath. According to her own belief, her whole life had been passed in a search for truth, but it is safe to say she had never before met it in so uncompromising and disagreeable a shape. ‘Perhaps when you are quite through with your billingsgate,’ she finally said, ‘you will take yourself off my steps before you are ejected. You! to presume to criticise me! You, that are so low in the scale of being, you can no more understand my feelings and motives than a jellyfish can comprehend a star! Go back and tell Miss Mary,’ she went on majestically, as she gained confidence and breath, ‘that it is her duty and business to find the children, since they were last seen with her, and unless she proves more trustworthy they will not be allowed to return to her. Tell her, too, that when she wishes to communicate with me, she must choose some other messenger besides you, you impudent, grovelling little earthworm! Get out of my sight, or you will unfit me for my classes!’ Mrs. Grubb was fairly superb as she launched these thunderbolts of invective; the staircase her rostrum, her left hand poised impressively on the baluster, and the three snaky strands of brown hair that had writhed out of the waving-pins hissing Medusa-wise on each side of her bead.