Stuart with a shrillness that roused the girl from her heavy sleep
more effectually than the anathemas Mr. Stuart was fulminating
against the fire.
Sitting up she looked dizzily about her. The smoke was clearing
fast, a window having been opened; and the tableau was a striking
one. Mr. Stuart with an excited countenance was dancing frantically
on a heap of half-consumed clothes pulled from the wall. He had not
only drenched them with water from bowl and pitcher, but had also
cast those articles upon the pile like extinguishers, and was
skipping among the fragments with an agility which contrasted with
his stout figure in full evening costume, and his besmirched face,
made the sight irresistibly ludicrous.
Mrs. Stuart, though in her most regal array, seemed to have left her
dignity downstairs with her opera cloak, for with skirts gathered
closely about her, tiara all askew, and face full of fear and anger,
she stood upon a chair and scolded like any shrew.
The comic overpowered the tragic, and being a little hysterical with
the sudden alarm, Christie broke into a peal of laughter that sealed
her fate.
"Look at her! look at her!" cried Mrs. Stuart gesticulating on her
perch as if about to fly.
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