‘Stop that damned noise!’ shouted Crewe.  ’I’ve told you once already.  Try it on again, my lad, and I’ll drop you down the well of the staircase—­you’ve too much breath, you have.’

The other workmen laughed.  It was evident that Crewe had made friends with them all.

‘Won’t be bad, when we get the decks cleared,’ he remarked to Beatrice.  ‘Plenty of room to make twenty thousand a year or so.’

He checked himself, and asked in a subdued voice, ’Seen anything of the Lords?’

Beatrice nodded with a smile.  ‘And heard about the will.  Have you?’

‘No, I haven’t.  Come into this little room.’

He closed the door behind them, and looked at his companion with curiosity, but without show of eagerness.

‘Well, it’s a joke,’ said Miss.  French.

‘Is it?  How?’

’Fanny’s that mad about it!  She’d got it into her silly noddle that Horace Lord would drop in for a fortune at once.  As it is, he gets nothing at all for two years, except what the Barmbys choose to give him.  And if he marries before he’s four-and-twenty, he loses everything—­every cent!’

Crewe whistled a bar of a street-melody, then burst into laughter.

’That’s how the old joker has done them, is it?  Quite right too.  The lad doesn’t know his own mind yet.  Let Fanny wait if she really wants him—­and if she can keep hold of him.  But what are the figures?’

’Nothing startling.  Of course I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but Horace Lord will get seven thousand pounds, and a sixth share in the piano business.  Old Barmby and his son are trustees.  They may let Horace have just what they think fit during the next two years.  If he wants money to go into business with, they may advance what they like.  But for two years he’s simply in their hands, to be looked after.  And if he marries—­pop goes the weasel!’

‘And Miss.  Lord?’ asked Crewe carelessly.

Beatrice pointed a finger at him.

’You want to know badly, don’t you?  Well, it’s pretty much the same as the other.  To begin with, if she marries before the age of six-and-twenty, she gets nothing whatever.  If she doesn’t marry, there’s two hundred a year to live on and to keep up the house.—­ Oh, I was forgetting; she must not only keep single to twenty-six, but continue to live where she does now, with that old servant of theirs for companion.  At six-and-twenty she takes the same as her brother, about seven thousand, and a sixth share in Lord and Barmby.’

Again Crewe whistled.

‘That’s about three years still to live in Grove Lane,’ he said thoughtfully.  ’Well, the old joker has pinned them, and no mistake.  I thought he had more to leave.’

‘Of course you did,’ remarked Beatrice significantly.

‘Look here, old fellow, don’t talk to me like that,’ he replied good-humouredly, but with a reproof not to be mistaken.  ’I thought nothing about it in the way that you mean.  But it isn’t much, after living as he has done.  I suppose you don’t know how the money lies?’