Sir Franks groaned at the thought.
“How much does he offer to settle on them?” he asked.
“A thousand a year on the marriage, and the same amount to the first child. I daresay the end would be that they would get all.”
Sir Franks nodded, and remained with one eye-brow pitiably elevated above the level of the other.
“Anything but a tailor!” he exclaimed presently, half to himself.
“There is a prejudice against that craft,” her ladyship acquiesced. “Béranger—let me see—your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn’t it his father?—no, his grandfather. ‘Mon pauvre et humble grandpère,’ I think, was a tailor. Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don’t affect me. One trade I imagine to be no worse than another.”
“Ferdinand’s allowance is about a thousand,” said Sir Franks, meditatively.
“And won’t be a farthing more till he comes to the title,” added her ladyship.
“Well,” resumed Sir Franks, “it’s a horrible bother!”
His wife philosophically agreed with him, and the subject was dropped.