unmoved:

"Beware! beware!
Trust her not; she is fooling thee."

Thus Mrs. Geer, who was a thorough tactician. Like Napoleon, she was
never more elated than after a defeat. Before consulting her husband
at all, she had contemplated the subject in all its bearings, and had
deliberately decided that Ivy was to go to school. The consent of the
senior partner of the firm was a secondary matter, which time
and judicious management would infallibly secure. Consequently,
notwithstanding the unpropitious result of their first colloquy, she the
next day commenced preparations for Ivy's departure, as unhesitatingly,
as calmly, as assiduously, as if the day of that departure had been
fixed.

Mrs. Geer was right. She knew she was, all the time. She had a sublime
faith in herself. She felt in her soul the divine afflatus, and pressed
forward gloriously to her goal. Mr. Geer had as much firmness, not to
say obstinacy, as falls to the lot of most men; but Mrs. Geer had more;
and as Launce Outram, hard beset, so pathetically moaned, "A woman in
the very house has such deused opportunities!" so Farmer Geer grumbled,
and squirmed, and remonstrated, and--yielded.

Mrs. Geer was _not_ right. She had reckoned without her host. Her
affairs were gliding down the very Appian Way of prosperity in a
chariot-and-four, with footmen and outriders, when, presto! they turned
a sharp and unexpected corner, and over went the whole establishment
into a mirier mire than ever bespattered Dr. Slop.