As a happy thought, Mrs. Wedmore suggested haranguing the mob from an
upper window. This course seemed rather ignominious, but prudence
decided in its favor.

There was a rush upstairs, and Mr. Wedmore, followed by all the ladies,
flung himself into the bathroom and threw up the window.

It was not at all the sort of thing that merry squire of the olden times
might have been expected to do. In fact, as Doreen remarked, there were
no bathrooms in the olden time to harangue a mob from. But Mr. Wedmore's
medieval ardor being damped, he submitted to circumstances with
fortitude.

"Yah! There 'e is at last!" "'Ow are you, old un?" "Don't put your nose
out too fur this cold night!"

These and similar ribald remarks greeted Mr. Wedmore as he appeared at
the window, telling him only too plainly that the merry days of old were
gone, never to be restored, and that the feudal feeling which bound (or
is supposed to have bound) rich and poor, gentle and simple, in one
great tie of brotherhood had disappeared forever.

Doreen and Queenie were secretly enjoying the fun, though they had the
sense to be very quiet; but Mrs. Wedmore was in an agony of sympathy
with her husband, and of fear for the results of his enterprise. He
began a speech of thanks, but the noise below was too great for him to
be heard. Indeed, it was his own servants who did the most toward
drowning his voice by their well-meant endeavors to shout down the
interrupting cries.