peaking, as I so often do? Whatever I
see, I am silent." And accordingly was for a few illustrative seconds.

But her son, conceiving that the pause was one very common in cases
of incipient beefsteak-pudding, and really due to kidneys, made an
autopsy of the centre of Mrs. Iggulden's masterpiece; but when he had
differentiated its contents and insulated kidneys beyond a doubt, he
stood exposed and reproved by the tone in which his mother resumed:

"Not for me; I have oceans. I shall never eat what I have, and it
_is_ so wasteful!... No, my dear. You ask, 'What is it, then?' But
I was going to tell you when you interrupted me." Here a pause for
the Universe to settle down to attention. "There is always so much
disturbance; but my meaning is plain. When I was a girl young women
were different.... I dare say it is all right. I do not wish to lay
myself open to ridicule for my old-fashioned opinions.... What
_is_ it? I came back early, certainly, because I found the sun so
tiring; but surely, my dear, you cannot have failed to see that our
front window commands a full view of the bathing-machines. But I
am silent.... Mrs. Iggulden does not understand making mustard.
Hers runs."

Dr. Conrad was not interested in the mustard. He _was_ about the
cryptic attack on Sally's swimming and diving, which he felt to have
been dexterously conveyed in his parent's speech with scarcely a
word really to the point. There was no lack of skill in the Goody's
method. He flushed slightly, and made no immediate reply--even to
a superhumanly meek, "I know I shall be told I am wrong"--until after
he had complied with a requisition for a very little more--so small
a quantity as to seem somehow to reduce the lady's previous total
morally, though it added to it physically--and then he spoke, taking
the indictment for granted:

"I can't see what you find fault with. Not Miss Sally's
bathing-costume; nobody could!" Which was truth itself, for nothing
more elegant could have been found in the annals of bathing. "And if
she has a boat to dive off, somebody must row it. Besides, her mother
would object if...." But the doctor is impatient and annoyed--a rare
thing with him. He treats his beefsteak-pudding coldly, causing his
mother to say: "Then you can ring the bell."

However, she did not intend her text to be spoiled by irruptions
of Mrs. Iggulden, so she waited until the frequent rice-pudding had
elapsed, and then resumed at an advantage:

"Y