THE TURNING OF THE WORM
No one spoke a word for quite a minute. The girls and mamma were looking at me—I was conscious of their eyes all over me—and I was looking at the floor. I felt as if I had been guilty of—to say the very least—the gravest impropriety, though I had not the faintest notion how, and was thoroughly well aware that now the storm was about to burst,—which presently it did. Mamma began—in that tone of voice in which she addresses observations to the servants which she dares them to deny. It gives you the impression that she is sitting on the safety-valve, and that in another half-second there will be a blow-up. And there generally is.
“Norah, may I ask you to tell me what is the meaning of the scene which I have just witnessed?”
I smoothed the petals of one of Mr Carter’
