live. I'm all ready."

"All right. Don't be in a hurry. I want to know whether you really
think my father drank."

"Why should I, dear? I never heard anything about him--at least, I
never heard anything myself. Mamma heard something. Only I wasn't to
repeat it. Besides, it was nothing whatever to do with drink." The
moment Laetitia said this, she knew that she had lost her hold on
her only resource against cross-examination. When the difficulty of
concealing anything is thrown into the same scale with the pleasure of
telling it, the featherweights of duty and previous resolutions kick
the beam. Then you are sorry when it's too late. Laetitia was, and
could see her way to nothing but obeying the direction on her music,
which was _attacca_. To her satisfaction, Sally came in promptly in
the right place, and a first movement in B sharp went steadily through
without a back-lash. There seemed a chance that Sally hadn't caught
the last remark, but, alas! it vanished.

"What was it, then, if it wasn't drink?" said she, exactly as if there
had been no music at all. Laetitia once said of Sally that she was
a horribly direct little Turk. She was very often--in this instance
certainly.

"I suppose it was the usual thing." Twenty-four, of course, knew more
than nineteen, and could speak to the point of what was and wasn't
usual in matters of this kind. But if Laetitia hoped that vagueness
would shake hands with delicacy and that details could be lubricated
away, she was reckoning without her Turk.

"What _is_ the usual thing?"

"Hadn't we better go on to the fugue? I don't care for the next
movement, and it's easy----"

"Not till you say what you mean by 'the usual thing.'"

"Well, dear, I suppose you know what half the divorce-cases are about?"

"_Tishy!_"

"What, dear?"

"There was _no_ divorce!"

"How do you know, dear?"

"I _should_ have known of it."

"How do you know that?"

"You might go on for ever that way. Now, Tishy dear, do be kind and
tell me what you heard and who said it. _I_ should tell _you_. You
_know_ I should." This appeal produces concession.

"It was old Major Roper told mamma--with blue pockets under his eyes
and red all over, creeks and wheezes when he speaks--do you know him?"

"No, I don't, and I don't want to. At least, I've just seen him at
a distance. I could see he was purple. _Our_ Major--Colonel Lund, you
know--says he's a horrible old gossip, and you can't rely on a word he
s