‘Silly! There you are. His father treats him like a boy; if he talked about marrying, he’d get a cuff on the ear. Oh, I know all about old Lord,’ Ada proceeded. ‘He’s a regular old tyrant. Why, you’ve only to look at him. And he thinks no small beer of himself, either, for all he lives in that grubby little house; I shouldn’t wonder if he thinks us beneath him.’
She stared at her sisters, inviting their comment on this ludicrous state of things.
‘I quite believe Nancy does,’ said Fanny, with a point of malice.
‘She’s a stuck-up thing,’ declared Mrs. Peachey. ‘And she gets worse as she gets older. I shall never invite her again; it’s three times she has made an excuse—all lies, of course.
‘Who will she marry?’ asked Beatrice, in a tone of disinterested speculation.
Mrs. Peachey answered with a sneer:
‘She’s going to the Jubilee to pick up a fancy Prince.’
‘As it happens,’ objected Fanny, ‘she isn’t going to the Jubilee at all. At least she says she isn’t. She’s above it—so her brother told me.’
‘I know who wants to marry her,’ Ada remarked, with a sour smile.
‘Who is that?’ came from the others.