knowing herself to be so looked upon, she said that she remained to save
them from the dangers they invited. Those dangers she named, observing
that Mrs. Lupin, their aunt, might know them, but was as liable to be
sent to sleep by a fellow with a bag of jokes as a watchdog to be quieted
by a bone. The allusion here was to Mrs. Lupin's painful, partially
inexcusable, incurable sense of humour, especially when a gleam of it led
to the prohibited passages of life. The poor lady was afflicted so
keenly that, in instances where one of her sex and position in the social
scale is bound to perish rather than let even the shadow of a laugh
appear, or any sign of fleshly perception or sympathy peep out, she was
seen to be mutely, shockingly, penitentially convulsed: a degrading
sight. And albeit repeatedly remonstrated with, she, upon such
occasions, invariably turned imploring glances--a sort of frowning
entreaty--to the ladies, or to any of her sex present. "Did you not see
that? Oh! can you resist it?" she seemed to gasp, as she made those
fruitless efforts to drag them to her conscious level. "Sink thou, if
thou wilt," was the phrase indicated to her. She had once thought her
propensity innocent enough, and enjoyable. Her nieces had almost cured
her, by sitting on her, until Mrs. Chump came to make her worst than
ever. It is to be feared that Mrs. Chump was beginning to abuse her
power over the little colourless lady. We cannot, when we find ourselves
possessed of the gift of sending a creature into convulsions, avoid
exercising it. Mrs. Lupin was one of the victims of the modern feminine
'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman; devout and charitable, as her
nieces admitted; but radically--what? They did not like to think, or to
say, what;--repugnant, seemed to be the word. A woman who consented to
perceive the double-meaning, who acknowledged its suggestions of a
violation of decency laughable, and who could not restrain laughter, was,
in their judgement, righteously a victim. After signal efforts to lift
her up, the verdict was that their Aunt Lupin did no credit to her sex.