“The Salique law doesn’t come into England.”
“Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of the old man’s daughter.
“Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?”
“Besides,”—Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility—“when there’s nobody but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among them.”
“Who gets it, then?”
“Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all blood-suckers.”
“I’m sure,” said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, “that abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a will, mother will be heiress.”
“Only halves with that black Undine of Allen’s,” sturdily persisted Bobus. “Is she coming here, Janet?”
“Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough.”
“If mother gets rich she won’t have all that teaching to bother her,” said Bobus.