‘If there was any chance of old Lord turning up his toes,’ said Beatrice thoughtfully.  ’I dare say he’ll leave a tidy handful behind him, but then he may live another ten years or more.’

‘And there’s Nancy,’ exclaimed Ada.  ’Won’t she get half the plunder?’

‘May be plenty, even then,’ said Beatrice, her head aside.  ’The piano business isn’t a bad line.  I shouldn’t wonder if he leaves ten or fifteen thousand.’

‘Haven’t you got anything out of Horace?’ asked Ada of Fanny.  ’What has he told you?’

‘He doesn’t know much, that’s the fact.’

’Silly!  There you are.  His father treats him like a boy; if he talked about marrying, he’d get a cuff on the ear.  Oh, I know all about old Lord,’ Ada proceeded.  ’He’s a regular old tyrant.  Why, you’ve only to look at him.  And he thinks no small beer of himself, either, for all he lives in that grubby little house; I shouldn’t wonder if he thinks us beneath him.’

She stared at her sisters, inviting their comment on this_ ludicrous state of things.

‘I quite believe Nancy does,’ said Fanny, with a point of malice.

‘She’s a stuck-up thing,’ declared Mrs. Peachey.  ’And she gets worse as she gets older.  I shall never invite her again; it’s three times she has made an excuse—­all lies, of course.

‘Who will she marry?’ asked Beatrice, in a tone of disinterested speculation.

Mrs. Peachey answered with a sneer: 

‘She’s going to the Jubilee to pick up a fancy Prince.’

‘As it happens,’ objected Fanny, ’she isn’t going to the Jubilee at all.  At least she says she isn’t.  She’s above it—­so her brother told me.’

‘I know who wants to marry her,’ Ada remarked, with a sour smile.

‘Who is that?’ came from the others.

‘Mr. Crewe.’

With a significant giggle, Fanny glanced at the more sober of her sisters; she, the while, touched her upper lip with the point of her tongue, and looked towards the window.

‘Does he?’ Fanny asked of the ceiling.

‘He wants money to float his teetotal drink,’ said Beatrice.  ’Hasn’t he been at Arthur about it?’

‘Not that I know,’ answered the wife.

‘He tried to get round me, but I—­’

A scream of incredulity from Fanny, and a chuckle from Mrs. Peachey, covered the rest of the sentence.  Beatrice gazed at them defiantly.

‘Well, idiots!  What’s up now?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘There’s nobody knows Luckworth Crewe better than I do,’ Beatrice pursued disdainfully, ’and I think he knows me pretty well.  He’ll make a fool of himself when he marries; I’ve told him so, and he as good as said I was right.  If it wasn’t for that, I should feel a respect for him.  He’ll have money one of these days.’

‘And he’ll marry Nancy Lord,’ said Ada tauntingly.

‘Not just yet.’

Ada rolled herself from the sofa, and stood yawning.