"Yes. I'm really afraid you will be done out of the joy of overloading Joyce with gifts. She'll be able to give you something. That will be a change, at all events. As for the velvet gown, if this," touching the letter, "bears any meaning, I should think you need not confine yourself to one velvet gown."
"And there's Tommy," says she quickly, her thoughts running so fast that she scarcely hears him. "You have always said you wanted to put him in the army. Now you can do it."
"Yes," says Monkton, with sudden interest. "I should like that. But you—you shrank from the thought, didn't you?"
"Well, he might have to go to India," says she, nervously.
"And what of that?"
"Oh, nothing—that is, nothing really—only there are lions and tigers there, Freddy; aren't there, now?"
"One or two," says Mr. Monkton, "if we are to believe travelers' tales. But they are all proverbially false. I don't believe in lions at all myself. I'm sure they are myths. Well, let him go into the navy, then. Lions and tigers don't as a rule inhabit the great deep."
"Oh, no; but sharks do," says she, with a visible shudder. "No, no, on the whole I had rather trust him to the beasts of the field. He could run away from them, but you can't run in the sea."
"True," says Mr. Monkton, with exemplary gravity. "I couldn't, at all events."