“And want of it the _stick_,” laughed Arthur. “But you are quite right, sir, and Sophy is making a great mistake about Rhoda; she won’t have a chance in London. The ugliest girl going, if she were only chaffy and got herself up well, would cut her out at once, knock her into smithereens, if she set about having a try with poor Rhoda. And then the _entourage_, the home, I mean”--explaining the foreign word for the benefit of his father-in-law, who understood about as much of the French language as he did of that of the twelve tribes--“the home in which my unfortunate sisters live is the last one in the world to tempt a man to commit matrimony in their behalf. In my opinion there is nothing like a jolly, genial mamma--the kind of mamma exactly that milady is _not_--for getting girls well married. By the bye, Sophy, my child--now don’t agitate yourself, or we may have to send prematurely for Mrs. Gamp--Lady Mill intends doing you the honour of calling here, and--” “O, Arthur, don’t say so! How horrid! I would so much rather go _there_. It is so much nicer to be able to go away when one has had enough--when one has nothing more to say, I mean, and--and I know I shall hate it so.” Old Dub, who formed a component part, and a greatly valued one by his daughter, of Arthur Vavasour’s family, had left the room the moment that the conversation turned, which it often did, on Lady Millicent and her shortcomings. The good old man, conscious of harbouring (a very unwelcome guest) in his inner man a decidedly unchristian dislike to the lady in question, abstained, as far as lay in his power, from the gratification--for such it undoubtedly was--of hearing her abused and ridiculed. His sense of honour, too, which was singularly keen, revolted from any secret attacks, any stabs in the dark, any--even the most well deserved--accusations, when the individual so accused was, from absence or ignorance, deprived not only of the opportunity of self-justification, but of bringing _en evidence_ the “other side of the question.”