“I did enjoy it very much when Aunt Cherry went with me, but—-”

“No buts, no buts.  You would come to the laundry girls, and the cooking-class, and all the rest with me, and we should not have a dreary moment.  Have you done fiddling over those flowers?”

“Not yet; Vale Leston flowers, you know.  Besides, Aunt Cherry can’t bear them not artistic.”

“Tidy is enough for Marilda.  She does them herself, or the housekeeper; I can’t waste time worrying over them.”

“That’s the reason they always look like a gardener’s prize bouquet at a country horticultural show,” said Gerald.

“What does it signify?  They are only a testimony to Sir Gorgias Midas’ riches.  I do hate orchids.”

“I wish them on their native rocks, poor things,” said Gerald.  “But poor Fernan, you do him an injustice.”

“Oh, yes, he does quantities of good works, and so does Marilda, till I am quite sick of hearing of them!  The piles of begging letters they get!  And then they want them read and explained, and answered sometimes.”

“A means of good works,” observed Gerald.

“How would you like it?  Docketing the crumbs from Dives’ table,” exclaimed Emilia.

“A clerk or secretary could do it,” said Anna.

“Of course.  Now if you have finished those flowers, do come out with me.  I want to go into Ponter’s Court, and Fernan won’t let me go alone.”

“Have you any special object?” said Gerald lazily, “or is it to refresh yourself with the atmosphere?”

“That dear boy-—that Silky-—has been taken up, and they’ve sent him to a reformatory.”

“What a good thing!”

“Yes, only I don’t believe he did it!  It was that nasty little Bill Nosey.  I am sure that he got hold of the lady’s parcel, and stuffed it into Silky’s cap.”

Emilia spoke with a vehemence that made them both laugh, and Gerald said—-

“But if he is in a reformatory, what then?  Are we to condole with his afflicted family, or bring Bill Nosey to confess?”

“I thought I would see about it,” said Emilia vaguely.

“Well, I decline to walk in the steps of the police as an amateur!  How about the Dicksons?”

“Drifted away no one knows where.  That’s the worst of it.  Those poor things do shift about so.”

“Yes.  I thought we had got hold of those boys with the gymnasium.  But work wants regulating.”

“Oh, Gerald, I am glad you are coming.  Now I am free!” Just fancy, they had a horrid, stupid, slow dinner-party on Easter Monday, of all the burgomasters and great One-eyers, and would not let me go down and sing to the match-girls!”

“You had the pleasure of a study of the follies of wealth instead of the follies of poverty.”

“Oh, to hear Mrs. Brown discourse on her troubles with her first, second, and third coachman!”

“Was the irresistible Ferdinand Brown there?”