“You great fool!” she cried--“you malicious wretch! Do you want to spoil my work as well as everything else? I wish you were little enough to be whipped, I do; and I wish I had whipped you when you were little, when it might have done you some good. Margaret, what do you mean sitting quiet there, enjoying yourself with a book and me driven out of my senses? That’s what he wants to do, I believe--to drive us mad and get his own way; to make us crazy, both his poor father and me.” “No, I don’t,” cried Gervase, “and you oughtn’t to hit me--I’ll hit back again if you do it again. It hurts--you’ve got a fist like a butcher, though you’re such an old lady.” He rubbed his cheek for a moment dolefully, and then again burst out laughing. “You look like old Judy in the show, mamma, when she hits her baby: only you’re so fat you could never get into it, and your voice is gruff like the old showman’s--not squeaky, like Mrs. Punch. I’ve cut all the silks into nice lengths for you to work with--ain’t you obliged to me? Look here,” he said, holding out his work. Poor Lady Piercey clapped her fat hands together loudly in sheer incapacity of expression. It made a loud report like a gun fired off to relieve her feelings, and Sir Giles looked up from his quiet game with Dunning, not without a subdued amusement that she should now be getting her share. “What’s the matter, what’s the matter, my lady? Is that cub of yours playing some of his pranks? It’s your turn to-night, it appears, and serves you right, for you always back him up.” “Oh, you fool, you fool, you fool!” cried the old lady in her passion. And then she turned her fiery eyes on her husband with a look of contempt and fury too great for words. “Meg!” she cried, putting out her hand across the table and grasping Mrs. Osborne’s arm, “If you’re ever driven wild like me, never you look for sympathy to a man! when they see you nearly mad with trouble they give you a look, and chuckle! that’s what they always do. Put down the scissors, you, you, you----” “Oh, and to think,” she cried wildly, “that that’s my only son! Oh, Giles, how can you play your silly games, and sit and see him--the only one we have between us, and he’s a born fool! And me, that was so thankful to see him stay at home, and give up going out to his low company! And now I can’t abide him. I can’t abide to see him here!” This happened on the night when Patty, frightened and dejected, shut herself up in the room which she had meant for her bridal bower, and cried her eyes out because of Gervase’s absence. The poor Softy was thus of as much importance as any hero, turning houses and hearts upside down. CHAPTER XI.