"What does your mother say?" There is a shade of asperity in the Professor's voice. "Says you were listening all the time, papa. So you were!" This is from Laetitia's younger sister, Theeny. Her name was Athene. Her brother Egerton called her "Gallows Athene"--an offensive perversion of the name of the lady she was called after. Her mother had carefully taught all her children contempt for their father from earliest childhood. But toleration of his weaknesses--etymology, and so on--had taken root in spite of her motherly care, and the Professor was on very good terms with his offspring. He negatived Theeny amiably. "No, my dear, I was like Mrs. Cluppins. The voices were loud, and forced themselves upon my ear. But as you all spoke at once, I have no idea what anybody said. My question was conjectural--purely conjectural. _Is_ anybody going to marry anybody? _I_ don't know." "What is your father talking about over there? _Is_ he going to help that tongue or not? Ask him." For a peculiarity in this family was that the two heads of it always spoke to one another through an agent. So clearly was this understood that direct speech between them, on its rare occasions, was always ascribed by distant hearers to an outbreak of hostilities. If either speaker had addressed the other by name, the advent of the Sergeant-at-Arms would have been the next thing looked for. On this occasion Laetitia's literal transmission of "_Are_ you going to help the tongue or not, papa?" recalled his wandering mind to his responsibilities. Sally's liver-wing--she was the visitor--was pleading at his elbow for its complement of tongue. But soon a four-inch space intervened between the lonely tongue-tip on the dish and what had once been, in military language, its base of operations. Everybody that took tongue had got tongue. "Well, then, how about who's married whom?" Thus the Professor, resuming his hand-rubbing, and neglecting the leg of a fowl. "Make your father eat his lunch, Laetitia. We _cannot_ be late again this afternoon." Whereon every one ate too fast; and Sally felt very glad the Professor had given her such a big slice of tongue, as she knew she wouldn't have the courage to have a second supply, if offered, much less ask for it. "Do you hear, papa? I'm to make you eat your lunch," says Laetitia; and her mother murmurs "That's right; make him," as though he were an anaconda in the snake-house, and her daughter a keeper who could go inside the cage. Laetitia then adds briefly that Mrs. Nightingale is going to marry Fenwick. "Ha! Mercy on us!" says the Professor quite vaguely, and, even more so, adds: "Chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken--chicken!" Though what he says next is more intelligible, it is unfortunate and ill-chosen: "And who _is_ Mrs. Nightingale?"