"Why--he said so little----"

"But he gave you some impression?"

"Oh, of course. He spoke as if she was a person--not a female you
know--a person!"

"A person isn't a female--when? Eh, missy?" This requires a little
consideration, and gets it. The result, when it comes, seems good in
its author's eyes.

"When they sit down. When you ask them to, you know. In the parlour,
I mean--not the hall. They might be a female then."

"Did he mean a lady?"

"And take milk and no sugar? And pull her gloves on to go? And leave
cards turned up at the corner? Oh no--not a lady, certainly!"

As she makes these instructive distinctions, Miss Sally is kneeling
on a hassock before a mature fire, which will tumble down and spoil
presently. When it does it will be time to resort to that hearth-broom,
and restrict combustion with collected caput-mortuum of Derby-Brights,
selected, twenty-seven shillings. Till then, Sally, who deserted the
Major's knee just as she asked what Mr. Fenwick was to stop in, is
at liberty to roast, and does so with undisturbed gravity. The Major
is becoming conscious of a smell like Joan of Arc at the beginning
of the entertainment, when her mother comes in on a high moral platform,
and taxes her with singeing, and dissolves the parliament, and rings
to take away breakfast, and forecasts an open window the minute the
Major has gone.

Sally doesn't wait for the open window, but as one recalled to the
active duties of life from liquefaction in a Turkish bath, takes a
cold plunge as far as the front gate without so much as a hat on--to
see if the post is coming, which is absurd--and comes back braced. But
though she only wonders what can have put such an idea as her mother
marrying Mr. Fenwick in the Major's dear silly old head, she keeps on
a steady current of speculation about who that Rosalind Nightingale he
knew could possibly have been; and whether she couldn't be got at even
now. It was such a pity he couldn't have a tip given about him who he
was. If he were once started, he would soon run; she was sure of that.
But did he want to run?--that was a point to consider. Did he really
forget as much as he said he did? How came he not to have forgotten
his languages he was so fluent with? And how about his book-keeping?
And that curious way he had of knowing about places, and then looking
puzzled when asked when he had been there. When they talked about
Klondyke the other day, for instance, and he seeme