The older habitues of the house were no more peaceable and were
equally given to what seemed to childish listeners endless disputes
about matters of no importance. Professor La Rue's white mustache and
pointed beard quivered with the intensity of his scorn for the modern
school of poetry, and Madame La Rue, who might be supposed to be
insulated by the vast bulk of her rosy flesh from the currents of
passionate conviction flashing through the Marshall house, had fixed
ideas on the Franco-Prussian War, on the relative values of American
and French bed-making, and the correct method of bringing up girls
(she was childless), which needed only to be remotely stirred to burst
into showers of fiery sparks. And old Professor Kennedy was nothing
less than abusive when started on an altercation about one of the
topics vital to him, such as the ignoble idiocy of the leisure-class
ideal, or the generally contemptible nature of modern society. No, it
was not mere difference of opinion which so charged the air during
Aunt Victoria's rare visits with menacing electricity.
As a matter of fact, if she did differ in opinion from her brother and
his wife, the children would never have been able to guess it from the
invariably restrained tones of her fluent and agreeable speech, so
different from the outspoken virulence with which people in that house
were accustomed to defend their ideas.
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