"'Don't mind me,' said Matilda. 'Go on.'
"'Ow the Juice d'e know that my name was Ernest? I nearly 'it a taxi at the corner of Sloane Square I was so took up puzzling over it. And it was only about three o'clock in the morning, when I was lying awake still puzzling over it, that it came into my 'ead——'
"Ernest assumed the manner of a narrator who opens out his culminating surprise. '—that that young lady I'd been taken out that evening was——'
"He paused before his climax.
"'Fenny,' whispered Prue.
"'Sister Fanny,' said Matilda Good.
"'Our Fanny,' said my mother.
"'No less a person than Fanny!' said my brother Ernest triumphantly and looked round for the amazement proper to such a surprise.
"'I thought it was going to be Fenny,' said Prue.
'Was she painted up at all?' asked Matilda.