‘You’ve time enough,’ said Nancy.  ’And, you know, after all it’s a historical event.  In the year 3000 it will be ‘set’ in an examination paper, and poor wretches will get plucked because they don’t know the date.’

This was quite a new aspect of the matter to Jessica Morgan.  She pondered it, and smiled.

‘Yes, I suppose it will.  But we should have to be out so late.’

‘Why not, for once?  It needn’t be later than half-past eleven.’  Nancy broke off and gesticulated.  ’That’s just why I want to go!  I should like to walk about all night, as lots of people will.  The public-houses are going to be kept open till two o’clock.’

‘Do you want to go into public-houses?’ asked Jessica, laughing.

’Why not?  I should like to.  It’s horrible to be tied up as we are; we’re not children.  Why can’t we go about as men do?’

‘Won’t your father make any objection?’ asked Jessica.

’We shall take Horace with us.  Your people wouldn’t interfere, would they?’

’I think not.  Father is away in Yorkshire, and will be till the end of the week.  Poor mother has her rheumatism.  The house is so dreadfully damp.  We ought never to have taken it.  The difference of rent will all go in doctors’ bills.—­I don’t think mother would mind; but I must be back before twelve, of course.’

‘I don’t see the “of course,"’ Nancy returned impatiently, ’but we could manage that.  I’ll speak to the Pasha to-night, and either come, or let you have a note, to-morrow morning.  If there’s any objection, I’m not sure that I shan’t make it the opportunity for setting up my standard of revolt.  But I don’t like to do that whilst the Pasha is out of sorts—­it might make him worse.’

‘You could reason with him quietly.’

’Reason with the Pasha—­How innocent you are, Jess!  How unworldly!  It always refreshes me to hear you talk.’

CHAPTER 4

Only twelve months ago Stephen Lord had renewed the lease of his house for a period of seven years.  Nancy, had she been aware of this transaction, would assuredly have found courage to enter a protest, but Mr. Lord consulted neither son nor daughter on any point of business; but for this habit of acting silently, he would have seemed to his children a still more arbitrary ruler than they actually thought him.

The dwelling consisted of but eight rooms, one of which, situated at the rear of the entrance passage, served Mr. Lord as sitting-room and bed-chamber; it overlooked a small garden, and afforded a side glimpse of the kitchen with its outer appurtenances.  In the front room the family took meals.  Of the chambers in the storey above, one was Nancy’s, one her brother’s; the third had, until six years ago, been known as ‘Grandmother’s room,’ and here its occupant, Stephen Lord’s mother, died at the age of seventy-eight.  Wife of a Norfolk farmer, and mother of nine children, she was one of the old-world women whose thoughts found abundant occupation in the cares and pleasures of home.  Hardship she had never known, nor yet luxury; the old religion, the old views of sex and of society, endured with her to the end.