Lady Jane was inclined to share this view. She knew that a great deal of her husband’s money went into mysterious channels of which she was unable to trace the ends, and concluded in her Victorian-wife kind of fashion, or at any rate hoped, that it was spent in alleviating the distress of the “Submerged Tenth” which at that time was much in evidence. Hence no doubt the gracious recognition that had come to him. John Blake himself, who paid over the cash, naturally had no such delusions, and unfortunately in that moment of exultation, when he contemplated his own name adorning the lists in every newspaper, let out the truth at breakfast at which Isobel was his sole companion. For by this time Lady Jane had grown too delicate to come down early.
“Well, you’ve got a baronet for a father now, my girl”—to be accurate he called it a “bart.”—he said puffing himself out like a great toad before the fire, as he threw down the Daily News in which his name was icily ignored in a spiteful leaderette about the Honours List, upon the top of The Times, The Standard, and The Morning Post.
“Oh!” said Isobel in an interested voice and paused.
“It’s wonderful what money can do,” went on her father, who was inclined for a discussion, and saw no other way of opening up the subject. “Certain qualifications of which it does not become me to speak, and a good subscription to the Party funds, and there you are with Bart. instead of Esq. after your name and Sir before it. I wonder when I shall get the Patent? You know baronets do not receive the accolade.”
“Don’t they?” commented Isobel. “Well, that saves the Queen some trouble of which she must be glad as she does not get the subscription. I know all about the accolade,” she added; “for Godfrey has told me. Only the other day he was showing me in the Abbey Church where the warriors who were to receive it, knelt all night before the altar. But they didn’t give subscriptions, they prayed and afterwards took a cold bath.”
“Times are changed,” he answered.
“Yes, of course. I can’t see you kneeling all night with a white robe on, Father, in prayer before an altar. But tell me, would they have made you a baronet if you hadn’t given the subscription?”
Sir John chuckled till his great form shook—he had grown very stout of late years.
“I think you are sharp enough to answer that question for yourself. I have observed, Isobel, that you know as much of the world as most young girls of your age.”
“So you bought the thing,” she exclaimed with a flash of her grey eyes. “I thought that honours were given because they were earned.”