“Listen, my cousin. Your grandfather’s sister Lucy married one Isaac Galley about the year 1847. It was not a good marriage for her. The husband became a bankrupt, and as by this time her father had fallen into his present condition or profession of a silent hermit, there was no help from him. Then they fell into poverty. Her son became a small clerk in the City, her grandson is a solicitor in the Commercial Road—not, I imagine, in the nobler or higher walks of that profession—and her grand-daughter is a teacher in a Board School.”
“Indeed!” The girl listened coldly; her eyes wandered round the room filled with well-dressed people. “A teacher in a Board School! And our cousin! A Board School teacher! How interesting! Shall we tell all these people about our new cousins?”
“No doubt they have all got their own second cousins. It is, I believe, the duty of the second cousin to occupy a lower rank.”
“I dare say. At the same time, we have always thought our family a good deal above the general run. And it’s rather a blow, Leonard, don’t you think?”
“It is, Philippa. But, after all, it remains a good old family. One second cousin cannot destroy our record. You may still be proud of it.”
He left the girl, and went in search of his uncle, whom he found, as he expected, in his study apart from the throng.
“Always over your papers,” he said. “May I interrupt for a moment?”
The barrister shuffled his papers hurriedly into a drawer.
“Always busy,” he said. “We lawyers work harder than any other folk, I believe, especially those with a confidential practice like my own, which makes no noise and is never heard of.”
“But not the less valuable, eh?”