The rout will be heard afar in the
parlour. The grown-up sister will hasten back and be beheld suddenly,
a quelling figure, on the threshold: `For shame, Clara! Mary, I wonder
at you! Henry, how dare you, sir? Silence, Ethel! Papa shall hear of
this.' Flushed and rumpled, the guilty four will hang their heads,
cowed by authority and by it perversely reconciled one with another.
Authority will bid them go upstairs `this instant,' there to shed
their finery and resume the drab garb of every day. From the bedroom-
windows they will see Lady Noble step into her yellow chariot and
drive away. Envy--an inarticulate, impotent envy--will possess their
hearts: why cannot they be rich, and grown-up, and bowed to by every
one? When the chariot is out of sight, envy will be superseded by the
play-instinct. Silently, in their hearts, the children will play at
being Lady Noble.... Mamma's voice will be heard on the stairs,
rasping them back to the realities. Sullenly they will go down to the
schoolroom, and resume their tasks. But they will not be able to
concentrate their unsettled minds. The girls will make false stitches
in the pillow-slips which they had been hemming so neatly when the
yellow chariot drove up to the front-door; and Master Harry will be
merely dazed by that page of the Delectus which he had almost got by
heart.
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