'Here are all the proofs, ready. Only just look at the sentence I marked for you. O Felix, how lucky Edgar has you for a brother, to save him from being blighted and crushed!'
'Is that head yours or his? Yours! I should say he was lucky to have such an unenvious sister. You would draw as well as he if you only had the teaching.'
'Oh no, don't say that! It spoils his! Though I do wish my drawing could be of some use.'
'Never mind about use. You are our pleasure,' as he saw her dissatisfied; 'besides, what would Pur (the household abbreviation of Pursuivant) do without the sub?'
This was much pleasanter! Cherry smiled at his kiss, and he ran downstairs, exulting—like herself—in their artist brother's future fame.
When he returned to the sitting-room in the evening twilight, the first voice he heard, through Theodore's humming, was Wilmet's, as in mitigation—'I daresay he is well educated, and not vulgar.'
'Oh! but the sound of it!' cried Alice Knevett's voice. 'A mere tradesman!'
'Who is the unfortunate?' asked Felix, coming forward.
'O Mr. Underwood, how you do steal upon one! Yes, I'm furious! Here's my old friend Florence Spelman—the dearest girl in the world, and so pretty—gone and engaged herself to young Schneider, of Schneider and Co., on the tailor's advertisements, you know! It is one of the first houses in London, and he's very rich and handsome and all that; but isn't it dreadful? All her friends will have to drop her! And I was so fond of her.'
'Is it trade itself, or the kind of trade, that outrages your feelings?' asked Felix, in a tone of raillery.