ll, after all, you know, he didn't really cause the
damage. I should have felt much less scruple if Higgins had offered
to pay--'

'He _did_ cause the damage,' asseverated Emmeline. 'It was his gross
or violent behaviour. If we had been insured it wouldn't matter so
much. And pray let this be a warning, and insure at once. However
you look at it, he ought to pay.'

Emmeline's temper had suffered much since she made the acquaintance
of Miss Derrick. Aforetime, she could discuss difference of opinion;
now a hint of diversity drove her at once to the female weapon--angry
and iterative assertion. Her native delicacy, also, seemed to
have degenerated. Mumford could only hold his tongue and trust that
this would be but a temporary obscurement of his wife's amiable
virtues.

Cobb had written from Bristol, a week after the accident, formally
requesting a statement of the pecuniary loss which the Mumfords had
suffered; he was resolved to repay them, and would do so, if
possible, as soon as he knew the sum. Mumford felt a trifle ashamed
to make the necessary declaration; at the outside, even with
expenses of painting and papering, their actual damage could not be
estimated at more than fifty pounds, and even Emmeline did not wish
to save appearances by making an excessive demand. The one costly
object in the room--the piano--was practically uninjured, and sundry
other pieces of furniture could easily be restored; for Cobb and his
companion, as amateur firemen, had by no means gone recklessly to
work. By candle-light, when the floor was still a swamp, things
looked more desperate than they proved to be on subsequent
investigation; and it is wonderful at how little outlay, in our
glistening times, a villa drawing-room may be fashionably equipped.
So Mumford wrote to his correspondent that only a few 'articles' had
absolutely perished; that it was not his wish to make any demand at
all; but that, if Mr. Cobb insisted on offering restitution, why, a
matter of fifty pounds, etc. etc. And in a few days this sum
arrived, in the form of a draft upon respectable bankers.

Of course the house was in grievous disorder. Upholsterers' workmen
would have been bad enough, but much worse was the establishment of
Mrs. Higgins by her daughter's bedside, which naturally involved her
presence as a guest at table, and the endurance of her conversation
whenever she chose to come downstairs. Mumford urged his wife to
take her summer holiday--to g