“There is a better plan which can’t go wrong,” she said, to herself. CHAPTER XXXVII. “I have some news for you,” said Mr. Horner to his wife a few days after this, as one evening he entered the drawing-room. The huge gold clock with the little white face pointed to the hour of eight, the golden pigs still climbed the golden hill, the golden swineherd still leaned meditatively on his golden staff. Mrs. Horner, arrayed in peacock-blue satin, glanced from her husband to the clock and back again to her husband. “News?” she said in a distinctly discouraging tone “Is it that which makes you so late? However, it’s of no consequence to me if the dinner is spoiled, quite the contrary, I am not particular. But I beg you wont grumble if the meat is done to a cinder.” “Never mind the dinner,” replied Mr. Horner captiously. “I have other things to think of than overdone joints. That fool Boniface has taken me at my word, and actually doesn’t intend to renew the partnership.” “What!” cried his wife, “not now that all this affair is cleared up, and you have apologized so handsomely to young Falck?” “No; it’s perfectly disgraceful,” said James Horner, looking like an angry turkey-cock as he paced to and fro. “I shook hands with Falck and told him I was sorry to have misjudged him, and even owned to Boniface that I had spoken hastily, but would you believe it, he wont reconsider the matter. He not only gives me the sack but he takes in my place that scheming Norwegian.” “But the fellow has no capital,” cried Mrs. Horner, in great agitation. “He is as poor as a rook! He hasn’t a single penny to put into the concern.” “Precisely. But Boniface is such a fool that he overlooks that and does nothing but talk of his great business capacities, his industry, his good address, and a lot of other rubbish of that sort. Why without money a fellow is worth nothing—absolutely nothing.” “From the first I detested him,” said Mrs. Horner. “I knew that the Bonifaces were deceived in him. It’s my belief that although his character is cleared as to this five-pound note business, yet he is really a mere adventurer. Depend upon it he’ll manage to get everything into his own hands, and will be ousting Roy one of these days.” “Well, he’s hardly likely to do that, for it seems the sister has been keeping her eyes open, and that idiot of a Roy is going to marry her.” “To marry Sigrid Falck?” exclaimed Mrs. Horner, starting to her feet. “Actually to bring into the family a girl who plays at dancing-classes and parties—a girl who sweeps her own house and cooks her own dinner!” “I don’t know that she is any the worse for doing that,” said James Horner. “It’s not the girl herself that I object to, for she’s pretty and pleasant enough, but the connection, the being related by marriage to that odious Falck, who has treated me so insufferably, who looks down on me and is as stand-offish as if he were an emperor.”