“Always the poor! the poor! money for the poor!” Tinman harped on further grievances against Van Diemen.  “I say doctors have said the drain on the common is healthy; it’s a healthy smell, nourishing.  We’ve always had it and been a healthy town.  But the sea encroaches, and I say my house and my property is in danger.  He buys my house over my head, and offers me the Crouch to live in at an advanced rent.  And then he sells me my house at an advanced price, and I buy, and then he votes against a penny for the protection of the shore!  And we’re in Winter again!  As if he was not in my power!”

“My dear Martin, to Elba we go, and soon, if you will govern your temper,” said Mrs. Cavely.  “You’re an angel to let me speak of it so, and it’s only that man that irritates you.  I call him sinfully ostentatious.”

“I could blow him from a gun if I spoke out, and he knows it!  He’s wanting in common gratitude, let alone respect,” Tinman snorted.

“But he has a daughter, my dear.”

Tinman slowly and crackingly subsided.

His main grievance against Van Diemen was the non-recognition of his importance by that uncultured Australian, who did not seem to be conscious of the dignities and distinctions we come to in our country.  The moneyed daughter, the prospective marriage, for an economical man rejected by every lady surrounding him, advised him to lock up his temper in submission to Martha.

“Bring Annette to dine with us,” he said, on Martha’s proposing a visit to the dear young creature.

Martha drank a glass of her brother’s wine at lunch, and departed on the mission.

Annette declined to be brought.  Her excuse was her guest, Miss Fellingham.

“Bring her too, by all means—­if you’ll condescend, I am sure,” Mrs. Cavely said to Mary.

“I am much obliged to you; I do not dine out at present,” said the London lady.

“Dear me! are you ill?”

“No.”

“Nothing in the family, I hope?”

“My family?”

“I am sure, I beg pardon,” said Mrs. Cavely, bridling with a spite pardonable by the severest moralist.

“Can I speak to you alone?” she addressed Annette.

Miss Fellingham rose.

Mrs. Cavely confronted her.  “I can’t allow it; I can’t think of it.  I’m only taking a little liberty with one I may call my future sister-in-law.”

“Shall I come out with you?” said Annette, in sheer lassitude assisting Mary Fellingham in her scheme to show the distastefulness of this lady and her brother.

“Not if you don’t wish to.”

“I have no objection.”

“Another time will do.”

“Will you write?”

“By post indeed!”

Mrs. Cavely delivered a laugh supposed to, be peculiar to the English stage.

“It would be a penny thrown away,” said Annette.  “I thought you could send a messenger.”