“I rushed up to see. Alas! the barbarians have papered him out. But what do you think I’ve got? The old cupboard door where all our heights were marked on our birthdays.”
“He set it up in his office,” said Gertrude. “I think he danced round it. I know he brought me and all the children to adore it, and showed us, just like a weather record, where every one shot up after the measles, and where Clement got above you, Cherry, and Lance remained a bonny shrimp.”
“A great move, but it sounds comfortable,” said Clement.
“Yes; for now Lance will get a proper luncheon, as he never has done since dear old Mrs. Froggatt died,” said Gertrude, “and he is an animal that needs to be made to eat! Then the children want schooling of the new-fashioned kinds.”
All this had become possible through Fulbert’s legacy between his brothers and unmarried sister, resulting in about £4000 apiece; besides which the firm had gone on prospering. Clement asked what was the present circulation of the ‘Pursuivant’, and as Lance named it, exclaimed—
“What would old Froggatt have said, or even Felix?”
“It is his doing,” said Lance, “the lines he traced out.”
“My father says it is the writing with a conscience,” said Gertrude.
“Yes, with life, faculty, and point, so as to hinder the conscience from being a dead weight,” added Geraldine.
“No wonder,” said Lance, “with such contributors as the Harewoods, and such a war-correspondent as Aubrey May.”