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Margot had often pitied the wives and sisters of enthusiastic fishermen who had perforce to sit mum-chance in the background, but to-day she was conscious of no dissatisfaction with her own position. The fish was hooked; it now remained to "play" with him, in professional parlance, till he could be landed with credit to himself and his captor.
Not only had Purdy never once looked near Amelia for the most part he had sat rather mum-chance, half-way in and out of a French window, even Zara's attempts to enliven him falling flat but, during an extra loud performance, Tilly had confided to Mary the family's plans for their spinster relative. And: "The poor little woman!" thought Mary again as she listened.
"Well, he might have; but not to my knowledge. What makes you ask?" "Because I used to know a Johnny Fortnight that wore one in these parts; and I thought it might be he, belike." "Jim had a greater gift o' speech than you can make pretence to," said the woman abruptly. "I often wonder that of two twin-brothers one should be so glib and t'other so mum-chance."
But she was a woman of such restless activity, and so wanting in the proper pride of a servant, that she would help a house-maid, or a lady's maid, or do anything almost, except be idle. To use her own words, she was one as couldn't abide to sit mum-chance. That fatal foe to domestic industry, the London Journal, fluttered in vain down her area, for she could not read.
"There was nothing to be hot about," said the Colonel, naively; "but that is neither here nor there. You are ten times worse than he is. He is only a prating, pedantic puppy, but you are a muff, sir, a most unmitigated muff, to stand there mum-chance and let such an article as that carry off the prize."
"Oscar" took the place of their favourite word as a term of contempt, and they shouted it at each other on all sides; bus-drivers, cabbies and paper sellers using it in and out of season with the keenest relish. For the moment the upper classes lay mum-chance and let the storm blow over.
But the apothecary for the moment was neither to hold nor to bind. "Sam! You have a grain of sense in your head. Don't sit there mum-chance, man! Speak up and tell your mother not to be a fool. You are no child; you know your father, and that, if given one chance in a hundred to act perversely, he'll take it as sure as fate.
At the least disturbance down here those men would fire mum-chance amongst the throng, and be delighted at the chance of doing so. You see our school of thought is recognized, and though hated it is respected. They, thanks to their dread of certain reprisals, recognize the truce so long as we are not engaged in active and open war against society. This is a great advance, monsieur, is it not?"
I would have spoken, only I knew that my voice would tremble, and so I sat mum-chance, staring at my pipe with unseeing eyes, and with my brain in a ferment. And presently came her voice, cool and sweet and sane: "Your tobacco, Peter," and she held the box towards me across the table. "Ah, thank you!" said I, and began to fill my pipe, while she watched me with her chin propped in her hands.
By George! everybody in Oa Bay was safe so long as they didn't try to make a fight of it; and he could have laughed to see the terrified women scooting for the church, the children bawling at their heels. The fools, what had they to fear? American officers were not the kind to fire on women and children, nor were they likely to look on mum-chance, and let the lime-juicers do it neither.
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