in the most comfortable chair; and Fanny twirled about on a music stool.
The only books in the room were a few show-volumes, which belonged to Arthur Peachey, and half-a-dozen novels of the meaner kind, wherewith Ada sometimes beguiled her infinite leisure. But on tables and chairs lay scattered a multitude of papers: illustrated weeklies, journals of society, cheap miscellanies, penny novelettes, and the like. At the end of the week, when new numbers came in, Ada Peachey passed many hours upon her sofa, reading instalments of a dozen serial stories, paragraphs relating to fashion, sport, the theatre, answers to correspondents (wherein she especially delighted), columns of facetiae, and gossip about notorious people. Through a great deal of this matter Beatrice followed her, and read much besides in which Ada took no interest; she studied a daily newspaper, with special note of law suits, police intelligence, wills, bankruptcies, and any concern, great or small, wherein money played a part. She understood the nature of investments, and liked to talk about stocks and shares with her male acquaintances.
They were the daughters of a Camberwell builder, lately deceased; to each of them had fallen a patrimony just sufficient for their support in elegant leisure. Ada’s money, united with a small capital in her husband’s possession, went to purchase a share in the business of Messrs. Ducker, Blunt & Co., manufacturers of disinfectants; Arthur Peachey, previously a clerk to the firm, became a junior partner, with the result that most of the hard work was thrown upon his shoulders. At their marriage, the happy pair first of all established themselves in a modest house near Camberwell Road; two years later, growing prosperity brought about their removal to De Crespigny Park, where they had now resided for some twelve months. Unlike their elder sister, Beatrice and Fanny had learnt to support themselves, Beatrice in the postal service, and Fanny, sweet blossom! by mingling her fragrance with that of a florist’s shop in Brixton; but on their father’s death both forsook their employment, and came to live with Mrs. Peachey. Between them, these two were the owners of house-property, which produced £140 a year. They disbursed, together, a weekly sum of twenty-four shillings for board and lodging, and spent or saved the rest as their impulses dictated.
CHAPTER 2
Ada brooded over her wrongs; Beatrice glanced over The Referee. Fanny, after twirling awhile in maiden meditation, turned to the piano and jingled a melody from ‘The Mikado.’ She broke off suddenly, and, without looking round, addressed her companions.
‘You can give the third seat at the Jubilee to somebody else. I’m provided for.’
‘Who are you going with?’ asked Ada.
‘My masher,’ the girl replied with a giggle.
‘Where?’
‘Shop-windows in the Strand, I think.’
She resumed her jingling; it was now ‘Queen of my Heart.’ Beatrice, dropping her paper, looked fixedly at the girl’s profile, with an eyelid droop which signified calculation.
‘How much is he really getting?’ she inquired all at once.
‘Seventy-five pounds a year. “Oh where, oh where, is my leetle dog gone?” ’
‘Does he say,’ asked Mrs. Peachey, ‘that his governor will stump up?’
They spoke a peculiar tongue, the product of sham education and mock refinement grafted upon a stock of robust vulgarity. One and all would have been moved to indignant surprise if accused of ignorance or defective breeding. Ada had frequented an ‘establishment for young ladies’ up to the close of her seventeenth year; the other two had pursued culture at a still more pretentious institute until they were eighteen. All could ‘play the piano;’ all declared—and believed—that they ‘knew French.’ Beatrice had ‘done’ Political Economy; Fanny had ‘been through’ Inorganic Chemistry and Botany. The truth was, of course, that their minds, characters, propensities had remained absolutely proof against such educational influence as had been brought to bear upon them. That they used a finer accent than their servants, signified only that they had grown up amid falsities, and were enabled, by the help of money, to dwell above-stairs, instead of with their spiritual kindred below.
Anticipating Fanny’s reply, Beatrice observed, with her air of sagacity:
‘If you think you’re going to get anything out of an old screw like Lord, you’ll jolly soon find your mistake.’
‘Don’t you go and make a fool of yourself, Fanny,’ said Mrs. Peachey. ‘Why, he can’t be more than twenty-one, is he?’
‘He’s turned twenty-two.’
The others laughed scornfully.
‘Can’t I have who I like for a masher?’ cried Fanny, reddening a little. ‘Who said I was going to marry him? I’m in no particular hurry to get married. You think everybody’s like yourselves.’
‘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,
