“Well, I think Jeannie is right,” said Miss Fortescue. “You would hate not living in London, Harry, and I think the best thing you can do is to have a flat there, quite small, so that one or two of us could very kindly come to stay with you, and let Jeannie and Arthur live in Wroxton. Then shut Morton up, or let it. You’d better let it, if possible. It’s only for a year or two, till you’ve paid these iniquitous Radical taxes. And then when you open it again you can order your beer from Arthur.” Arthur gave a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s settled,” he said. “Jeannie, let’s go into Wroxton this afternoon and see the householders or the house-agents. Oh, Aunt Em, what is going to happen to you?” “You are all so unselfish,” said Miss Fortescue, “that I thought one of you might have considered that. But I was wrong.” A general shout went up of “Come and live with me,” and the meeting was adjourned for the time being. Miss Fortescue, who has hitherto been distinguished from the Aveshams generally by the fact of her not being at all good-looking, had her compensations. She was, in the first place, exceedingly musical, and had about as much wits as two generations of Aveshams put together. She was a woman of very pronounced opinions, and though you might accidentally hit upon a subject on which she had neither opinion nor knowledge, she would be happy to pronounce an opinion on it offhand with such conviction as to lead you to suppose she knew something about it. If you could induce her to argue about the said subject, though you might suspect that she knew nothing whatever of it, yet you would find it difficult to bring her ignorance home to her. She would glean facts from her opponent as she went along, and use them against him with telling effect. But it was next to impossible to make her argue; if you disagreed with her she would raise her eyes to the ceiling as if commending you and your benighted condition to the hands of Providence. Like most clever people, she was sublimely inconsistent, and though she genuinely abhorred the idea of the death of any living creature, she would eat flesh meals without any qualms whatever. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that she hated fads as much as the death of innocent animals, and it was her dislike of vegetarians rather than of a vegetable diet which led to so sturdy an inconsistency. The same contradictions appeared in her views about horses and dogs, and she would rather walk to the station, though hating bodily exercise, than have out a horse which was bursting with condition and make it pull her. The same misplaced tenderness applied to her treatment of dogs, and her own pug was an object-lesson of unwholesome overfeeding.