Mr. Bullsom shook with good-humoured laughter.

“Mother, mother,” he said, “we shall never smarten you up, shall we, girls?  Now, what do you say, Selina?”

“I should like a country house quite ten on fifteen miles away from here, lots of horses and carriages, and a house in town for the season,” Selina declared, boldly.

“And you, Louise?”

“I should like what Selina has said.”

Mr. Bullsom looked a little grave.

“The house in London,” he said, “you shall have, whether I buy it or only hire it for a few months at a time.  If we haven’t friends up there, there are always the theatres and music-halls, and lots going on.  But a country house is a bit different.  I thought of building a place up at Nicholson’s Corner, where the trains stop.  The land belongs to me, and there’s room for the biggest house in Medchester.”

Selina tossed her head.

“Of course,” she said, “if we have to spend all our lives in this hateful suburb it doesn’t much matter whether you stay here on build another house, no one will come to see us.  We shall never get to know anybody.”

“And supposing you go out into the country,” Mr. Bullsom argued.  “How do you know that you will make friends there?”

“People must call,” Selina answered, “if you subscribe to the hounds, and you must get made a magistrate.”

“We have lived here for a good many years,” Mr. Bullsom said, “and there are very superior people living almost at our doors whom even you girls don’t know to bow to.”

Selina tossed her head.

“Superior, you call them, do you?  A silly stuck-up lot, I think.  They form themselves into little sets, and if you don’t belong, they treat you as though you had small-pox.”

“The men are all pleasant enough,” Mr. Bullsom remarked.  “I meet them in the trains and in business, and they’re always glad enough to pass the time o’ day.”

“Oh, the men are all right,” Selina answered.  “It’s easy enough to know them.  Mr. Wensome trod on my dress the other day, and apologized as though he’d torn it off my back, and the next day he gave me his seat in the car.  I always acknowledge him, and he’s glad enough to come and talk, but if his wife’s with him, she looks straight ahead as though every one else in the car were mummies.”

Mr. Bullsom cut the end of a cigar thoughtfully, and motioned Louise to get him a light.

“You see, your mother and I are getting on in life,” he said, “and it’s a great thing to ask us to settle down in a place where there’s no slipping off down to the club in the evening, and no chance of a friend dropping in for a chat.  We’ve got to an age when we need some one to talk to.  I ain’t going to say that a big house in the country isn’t a nice thing to have, and the gardens and that would be first-class.  But it’s a big move, and it ain’t to be decided about all in a hurry.”