"Where the security is a concern—a concern, sir, improving every day, with four and twenty young ladies as shop-assistants——"
"Fed on scrag of mutton and margarine!" observed the pew-opener, aloud.
"—in a promising suburb and in a crowded highway, with the electric light, a carriage often at the door, and the proprietor a churchwarden—a very different thing," he concluded, running down and forgetting the construction of his sentence.
The others said nothing; but the Board school teacher examined the pictures on the wall, and was absorbed for the moment in art criticism.
"You all want money," John Haveril repeated; "that is the reason why I invited you here to-day."
"Why shouldn't we?" asked the broken one. "You are the only one of the family who has got any money. As for this fellow"—he indicated the draper—"hollow, hollow! There's no stability in him, I know. Where I am there he ought to be—down among the dead men."
"Where a few pounds would be the making of us, and them not so much as missed," said the pew-opener, "why not?"
"I don't know," continued the capitalist, "that you've got any claim on me. You cut your cousin Alice off—out of the family—for her first marriage."
"What else," asked the spokesman, "could we do? She married an actor, sir—a common actor. No doubt she has long since repented her early choice. How different from her second venture—her second prize! Ah! a prize indeed."