to be offering them his chair. So did my wife, and she said, "You must
give up your place too, Basil," and I said I would if she wished to see
me starve on the spot. But of course I went and joined Glendenning in
his entreaties that they would deprive us of our chances of dinner (I
knew what the second table was on the _Corinthian_); and I must say that
the elder lady accepted my chair in the spirit which my secret grudge
deserved. She made me feel as if I ought to have offered it when they
first passed us; but it was some satisfaction to learn afterwards that
she gave Mrs. March, for her ready sacrifice of me, as bad a half-hour
as she ever had. She sat next to my wife, and the young lady took
Glendenning's place, and as soon as we had left them she began trying to
find out from Mrs. March who he was, and what his relation to us was.
The girl tried to check her at first, and then seemed to give it up, and
devoted herself to being rather more amiable than she otherwise might
have been, my wife thought, in compensation for the severity of her
mother's scrutiny. Her mother appeared disposed to hold Mrs. March
responsible for knowing little or nothing about Mr. Glendenning.

"He seems to be an Episcopal clergyman," she said, in a haughty summing
up. "From his name I should have supposed he was Scotch and a
Presbyterian." She began to patronize the trip we were making, and to
abuse it; she said that she did not see what could have induced them to
undertake it; but one had to get back from Niagara somehow, and they had
been told at the hotel there that the boats were very comfortable. She
had never been more uncomfortable in her life; as for the rapids, they
made her ill, and they were obviously so dangerous that she should not
even look at them again. Then, from having done all the talking and most
of the eating, she fell quite silent, and gave her daughter a chance to
speak to my wife. She had hitherto spoken only to her mother, but now
she asked Mrs. March if she had ever been down the St. Lawrence before.