Mr. Pericles administered consolation to his moustache by twisting it into long waxy points. "I do not know; I do not know," he put her away with, from time to time. In the end Mrs. Chump leaned over to Arabella. "Don't have 'm, my dear," she murmured. "You mean--?" quoth Arabella. "Here's the driest stick that aver stood without sap." Arabella flushed when she took the implication that she was looking on the man as a husband. Adela heard the remarks, and flushed likewise. Mrs. Chump eyed them both. "It's for the money o' the man," she soliloquized aloud, as her fashion was. Adela jumped up, and with an easy sprightly posture of her fair, commonly studious person, and natural run of notes "Oh!" she cried, "I begin to feel what it is to be like a live fish on the fire, frying, frying, frying! and if he can keep his Christian sentiments under this infliction, what a wonderful hero he must be! What a hot day!" She moved swiftly to the door, and flung it open. A sight met her eyes at which she lost her self-possession. She started back, uttering a soft cry. "Ah! aha! oh!" went the bitter ironic drawl of Mr. Pericles, whose sharp glance had caught the scene as well. Emilia came forward with a face like sunset. Diplomacy, under the form of Wilfrid Pole, kicked its heels behind, and said a word or two in a tone of false cheerfulness. "Oh! so!" Mr. Pericles frowned, while Emilia held her hand out to him. "Yeas! You are quite well? H'm! You are burnt like a bean--hein? I shall ask you what you have been doing, by and by." Happily for decency, Mrs. Chump had not participated in the fact presented by ocular demonstration. She turned about comfortably to greet Wilfrid, uttering the inspired remark: "Ye look red from a sly kiss!" "For one?" said he, sharpening his blunted wits on this dull instrument. The ladies talked down their talk. Then Wilfrid and Mr. Pericles interchanged quasi bows. "Oh, if he doesn't show his upper teeth like an angry cat, or a leopard I've seen!" cried Mrs. Chump in Adela's ear, designating Mr. Pericles. "Does he know Mr. Wilfrud's in the British army, and a new lieuten't, gazetted and all?" Mr. Pericles certainly did not look pleasantly upon Wilfrid: Emilia received his unconcealed wrath and spite. "Go and sing a note!" he said. "At the piano?" Emilia quietly asked. "At piano, harp, what you will--it is ze voice I want." Emilia pitched her note high from a full chest and with glad bright eyes, which her fair critics thought just one degree brazen, after the revelation in the doorway. Mr. Pericles listened; wearing an aching expression, as if he were sending one eye to look up into his brain for a judgement disputed in that sovereign seat. Still she held on, and then gave a tremulous, rich, contralto note. "Oh! the human voice!" cried Adela, overcome by the transition of tones. "Like going from the nightingale to the nightjar," said Arabella.