“There is some truth in that, my poor Mouse, I must allow,” said her brother with a shade of unwilling sympathy in his tone. “But it’s a beggarly rotten system to live your lives out on, and I think Broadstairs would be the better part, if you could only make up your mind to it. It would be only one effort instead of a series of efforts, and the cheap trippers wouldn’t be worse than the Mastodons; at least you wouldn’t have to do so much for them.”
“Massarenes,” said his sister with an impatient dive for the silver poker, and another dive with it at the fire. “The name isn’t such a bad name. It might have been Healy, it might have been Murphy.”
“It might have even been Biggar,” replied Hurstmanceaux, amused. “Possibilities in the ways of horror are infinite when we once begin opening our doors to people whom nobody knows. Practically, there need be no end to it.”
Mouse, leaning softly against her brother, with her hand caressing the lapel of his coat, said sweetly and insidiously:
“There is an only daughter, Ronald—an only child.”
“Indeed!”
“She will be an immense heiress,” sighed his sister. “Everybody will be after her.”
“Everybody bar one,” said her brother.
“And why bar one?”
His face darkened. “Don’t talk nonsense!” he said curtly. “I don’t like you when you are impertinent. It is a pity Cocky ever saw you; the Massarene alliance would have suited him down to the ground.”