“Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three sons.”
“How many daughters are there—in a bunch?” Mr. Temple Barholm suggested liberally.
There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though taking it with a sense of humor.
“'In a bunch' is an awfully good way of putting it,” he said. “It happens to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are much poorer than they should be, and daughters must be provided for. Each has four. 'In a bunch' there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith, Lady Ethel, and Lady Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd, Lady Honora, and Lady Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among them, poor girls!”
“It's not the money that matters so much,” said the astounding foreigner, “it's the titles.”
Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.
“I've had a confounded cold lately,” he said. “Excuse me; I must get it over.”
He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.
After watching him a few seconds Tembarom slipped two fingers into his waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.
“Take two of these,” he said as soon as the cough stopped. “I always carry it about with me. It's a New York thing called 'G. Destroyer.' G stands for grippe.”