"But we couldn't, mother."

"Couldn't?" both echoed.

"No," said Jock, "or we should be still in Piccadilly. Mother Carey,
she told us not to cross till it was safe."

"And she stood up like the Duke of Bedford in the Square," added
Armine.

Janet caught her mother's eye, and both felt a spasm of
uncontrollable diversion in their throats, making Janet turn her
back, and Carey gasp and turn on the boys.

"All that is no reason at all. Go up to the nursery. I wish I could
trust you to behave like a gentleman, when your aunt is so kind as to
take you out."

"I _did_, mother! I did hand her across the street, and dragged her
out from under all the omnibus horses," said Jock in an injured tone,
while Janet could not refrain from a whispered comparison, "Like a
little steam-tug," and this was quite too much for all of them,
producing an explosion which made the tall and stately dame look from
one to another in such bewildered amazement, that struck the mother
and daughter as so comical that the one hid her face in her hands
with a sort of hysterical heaving, and the other burst into that
painful laughter by which strained spirits assert themselves in the
young.

Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in utter astonishment and discomfiture, turned