Aunt Belle to the rescue! If Uncle Pyke and Aunt Belle had kept house in Seven Dials instead of Notting Hill, Uncle Pyke would have beaten Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle would have taken the blows without flinching and then have wheedled Uncle Pyke with drops of gin. As it was, Uncle Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle’s way with him--as with all combative men--was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, either to eat or sleep.
Aunt Belle had blinked, as Rosalie had blinked, at that horrible epithet “Little fool!” across the table. The lips that uttered it were immediately stuffed with trout and Aunt Belle immediately rushed in in her rallying way to the rescue. “Why, you great, big stupid Uncle Pyke!” cried Aunt Belle vivaciously. “It’s you who don’t know what you’re talking about, you unkind old thing, you. Why, many, many girls, quite nice girls, are going into business now and being secretaries and things and doing very, very well indeed. Why, I declare it would do you good to have a lady secretary yourself in that big, dusty office of yours in the City, never dusted from one year’s end to another, I’m sure! Laetitia, wouldn’t it do your father good, the cross, grumpy old thing? Give your master some more of the sauce, Parker. Isn’t that trout delicate and nice, Pyke? Trout for a pike! And I’m sure very like a nasty, savage old pike the way you tried to gobble up poor Rosalie, the dear child. Now, Rosalie, dear child, I think that’s a very, very good idea of yours to go into business. I think it’s a splendid idea, and more and more quite nice girls will soon be doing it. Now we’ll just see what we can do and we’ll make that cross old uncle help and ask all his cross old friends in the City, just to punish him. A young Lady Clerk, or a young Lady Secretary! Now I think that’s the very, very thing for you. Just the thing, and a dear, clever child to think of it. Yes!”
Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Victory through Aunt Belle! Accomplishment! A career like a man! Aunt Belle had said it and Aunt Belle would do it! A career like a man! Oh, ecstatic joy! “Lombard Street” had been brought with her in her week-end suitcase. Directly she could get to bed she rushed up to it and took it out and read, and read. It was all underlined. She underlined it more that happy, happy night!