dies might
desire to cloak facts, but they had no pleasure in deception. They had
the feminine power of extinguishing things disagreeable, so long as
nature or the fates did them no violence. When these forces sent an
emissary to confound them, as was clearly the case with Mrs. Chump, they
fought. The dreadful creature insisted upon shows of maudlin affection
that could not be accorded to her, so that she existed in a condition of
preternatural sensitiveness. Among ladies pretending to dignity of life,
the horror of acrid complaints alternating with public offers of love
from a gross woman, may be pictured in the mind's eye. The absence of Mr.
Pole and Wilfrid, which caused Mrs. Chump to chafe at the restraint
imposed by the presence of males to whom she might not speak endearingly,
and deprived the ladies of proper counsel, and what good may be at times
in masculine authority, led to one fierce battle, wherein the great shot
was fired on both sides. Mrs. Chump was requested to leave the house: she
declined. Interrogated as to whether she remained as an enemy, knowing
herself to be so looked upon, she said that she remained to save them
from the dangers they invited. Those dangers she named, observing that
Mrs. Lupin, their aunt, might know them, but was as liable to be sent to
sleep by a fellow with a bag of jokes as a watchdog to be quieted by a
bone. The allusion here was to Mrs. Lupin's painful, partially
inexcusable, incurable sense of humour, especially when a gleam of it led
to the prohibited passages of life. The poor lady was afflicted so keenly
that, in instances where one of her sex and position in the social scale
is bound to perish rather than let even the shadow of a laugh appear, or
any sign of fleshly perception or sympathy peep out, she was seen to be
mutely, shockingly, penitentially convulsed: a degrading sight. And
albeit repeatedly remonstrated with, she, upon such occasions, invariably
turned imploring glances--a sort of frowning entreaty--to the ladies, or
to any of her sex present. "Did you not see that? Oh! can you resist it?"
she seemed to gasp, as she made those fruitless efforts to drag them to
her conscious level. "Sink thou, if thou wilt," was the phrase indicated
to her. She had once thought her propensity innocent enough, and
enjoyable. Her nieces had almost cured her, by sitting on her, until Mrs.
Chump came to make her worst than ever. It is to be feared that Mrs.
Chump was beginning to a