"Yes," he agreed; "but the point is, apart from the horrible expense of it all, that here we are, saddled with a name which is bound to keep customers away and which we thought we had got rid of for ever. It's horrible. It's wrong. It's a shame." He paced the room furiously.
Mrs. Bannockburn—or, as we now should say, Mrs. Blumenbach—looked in the fire for a few moments in silence. "Well," she said at last, "we must make the best of it, I suppose; we're not paupers anyway, and things are never so bad as one fears. After all, we haven't been to so very much expense. A few cards and so forth. You, dear, can hardly have spent a penny over it."
"Eh," said Mr. Blumenbach sharply—"what?"
"I said that the cost to which we have gone since we changed our name is very trifling," his wife repeated. "You yourself have been put to no expense at all, except perhaps office paper."
Mr. Blumenbach looked suspiciously at her and resumed his walk. "No, no," he said; "that's fortunate certainly."
At this moment a servant entered bringing the post, which included a long roll of paper addressed to "Mrs. Julius Bannockburn."
"I wonder what this can be," she remarked as she reached for a paper-knife.
Her husband snatched it and held it behind him. "Oh, I know all about that," he said; "it's a mistake. It's meant for me, not you."
"But it's addressed to me," said his wife. "Please let me have it."
Mr. Blumenbach for a moment flashed lightning. "Oh, all right," he said, "take it. I might as well confess to my folly, and, after all, I did it as a pleasant surprise for you, even though it's a failure. But I heard about some heraldic fellow, and I got him to draw me up a Bannockburn pedigree. A Scotch one, you know. I was going to have it framed in the hall. Burn the thing without looking at it."