"Yes, much care you take of me. You only think of enjoying yourself. It's young girls who ought to go out, not old women." "You impudent face!" And with an irresistible impulse of savagery, a reversion to the days of _Médiâni_, Flutter-Duck swung round her arm, and struck Rachel violently on the cheek with her white-gloved hand. [Illustration: "'YOU IMPUDENT FACE!'"] The sound of the slap rang hollow and awful through the room. The workers looked up and paused, the neighbours held their breath; there was a dread silence, broken only by the hissings of the excited goose, and the half involuntary apologetic murmurings of Flutter-Duck's lips: "If I bin a mother, I bin a mother." For an instant Rachel's face was a white mask, on which five fingers stood out in fire; the next it was one burning mass of angry blood. She clenched her fist, as if about to strike her mother, then let the fingers relax; half from a relic of filial awe, half from respect for the finery. There was a peculiar light in her eyes. Without a word she turned slowly on her heel and walked into her little room, emerging, after an instant of general suspense, with the pink wrap in her hand. She gave it to her mother, without looking at her, and walked back to her work, and poor foolish Flutter-Duck, relieved, triumphant, and with an irreproachable head-wrap, passed majestically from the room, amid the buzz of the neighbours (who accompanied her downstairs with valedictory brushings of fur-fluff from her shoulders), through the avenue of polyglot commentators, into the waiting cab. All this time Flutter-Duck's husband had sat petrified, but now a great burst of coughing shook him. He did not know what to say or do, and prolonged the cough artificially to cover his embarrassment. Then he opened his mouth several times, but shut it indecisively. At last he said soothingly, with kindly clumsiness: "Nee, nee; you shouldn't irritate the mother, Rachel. You know what she is." Rachel's needle plodded on, and the uneasy silence resumed its sway. Presently Rachel rose, put down her piece of work finished, and without a word passed back to her bedroom, her beautiful figure erect and haughty. Lewis heard her key turn in the lock. The hours passed, and she did not return. Her father did not like to appear anxious before the "hands," but he had a discomforting vision of her lying on her bed, in a dumb agony of shame and rage. At last eight o'clock struck, and, backward as the work was, Lewis did not suggest overtime. He even dismissed the servant an hour before her time. He was in a fever of impatience, but delicacy had kept him from intruding on his daughter's grief before strangers. Now he hastened to her door, and knocked timidly, then loudly. "Nee, nee, Rachel," he cried, with sympathetic sternness, "Enough!" But a chill silence alone answered him.