"Don't you think, Cousin Fanny," whispered Pussy, "that Gabriella had
better leave the room?"

"Gabriella? Why, how on earth can we spare her?" Mrs. Carr whispered
back rather nervously. Then, beneath Pussy's compelling glance, she
added timidly: "Hadn't you better go, darling, and see what the children
are doing?"

"They are playing in the laundry," replied Gabriella reassuringly. "I
told Dolly not to let them go out of her sight."

"She knows so much already for her age," murmured Mrs. Carr
apologetically to Pussy.

"I don't know what Mr. Wrenn will think of your staying, dear," said
Pussy, smiling archly at the girl. "Mr. Wrenn, I was just saying that I
didn't know what you would think of Gabriella's staying in the room."

Jimmy's large handsome face, with its look of perpetual innocence--the
incorruptible innocence of a man who has never imagined anything--turned
helplessly in the direction of his wife. All things relating to
propriety came, he felt instinctively, within the natural sphere of
woman, and to be forced, on the spur of the moment, to decide a delicate
question of manners, awoke in him the dismay of one who sees his
accustomed prop of authority beginning to crumble. Surely Pussy knew
best about things like that! He would as soon have thought of
interfering with her housekeeping as of instructing her in the details
of ladylike conduct. And, indeed, he had not observed that Gabriella was
in the room until his wife, for her own purpose, had adroitly presented
the fact to his notice.