“And to think of my poor dear mother-in-law looking for us, holding out her poor arms to us--and us knowing nothing,” said Patty, drying her eyes--“as if there were no telegraphs nor railways! Which makes it very sad for us to come home now; but I hope your dear father, Gervase, if he’s rightly watched and done for, won’t be any the worse. Oh, I hope not! it would be too sad. That Dunning, who has been thought so much of, does not seem to me at all fit for his place. To think of him to-day, such an agitating day, with nothing to give his master! I shall take the liberty of superintending Mr. Dunning in future,” Patty said. Gerald Piercey and Margaret Osborne ate what was set before them humbly, without raising their eyes. They were ridiculously silenced and reduced to subjection; even if they could have encouraged each other with a glance it would have been something, but they had not even that alleviation. What to say! They were ignored as completely as if they had been two naughty children. Gervase, more naughty still, but in favour, took advantage by behaving himself as badly as possible. He made signs to the butler to pour him out wine with a liberal hand, and gobbled his food in great mouthfuls. “I say, Meg,” he whispered, putting his hand before his mouth, “don’t tell! she can’t see me!” while his wife’s monologue ran on; and then he interrupted it with one of those boisterous laughs by which the Softy was known. “What is it?” Patty cried sharply from the head of the table. “Meg knows--Meg and me knows,” cried Gervase from the other end. “I must request,” said Patty, “Margaret Osborne, that you will not make my husband forget, with your jokes, what day it is. You mayn’t think it, perhaps, for my poor dear mother-in-law was not very kind to me--but I feel it to be a very solemn day. And you may be very witty and very clever, though you don’t show it to me--but I won’t have laughing and nonsense at my table on poor dear Lady Piercey’s funeral day.” What was Margaret to do? She could not defend herself from so grotesque an accusation. She looked up with some quick words on her lips, but did not say them. It was intolerable, but it was at the same time ludicrous; a ridiculous jest, and yet the most horribly, absurdly serious catastrophe in the world. “The laughing seems all on your husband’s side,” said Colonel Piercey, unable to refrain. “Oh!” said Patty, fixing upon him a broad stare: and then she, too, permitted herself a little laugh. “It’s the strangest thing,” she said, “and I can’t help seeing it’s ridiculous--though laughing is not in my mind, however it may be in other people’s, on such a day--here’s a gentleman sitting at my table, and everybody knows him but me.”