“And--I am going to marry yonder daughter of the people!” “Ah! Rumour for once is correct, then?” says the gentleman, to whom the amplification and publication of Rumour brings in £40,000 per annum. “Yes, I marry the young woman you saw when you wished for a Kodak.” For once Fanshawe has not a syllable to say: he is dumb. “You look astonished,” remarks Bertram. “Yet with your principles----” “Principles be damned!” says Fanshawe. “They must go to the wall when they trample on common sense.” “But surely for you no class divisions exist?” says Bertram, with some maliciousness. “Therefore of course you will congratulate me as warmly as if my future wife were that abominable thing a duke’s daughter.” “There ought to be no race-horses, but while there are we put our money on them,” replied Fanshawe. “We must take the world as it is, or cut our throats in it. You are cutting yours with a bowie knife. I will return to my chocolate pot.” At that instant Mrs. Brown comes down the road out of breath. Annie is out of sight. “I am come after my daughter, Mr. Bertram, if you please. Soon as I told her ye was here I was that mad with myself, for it flashed across me she’d come and----” “And why not, madam?” says Fanshawe. “It is, it seems, all _en tout bien, tout honneur_.” “I don’t understand gibberish, sir, but girls should be circumspec.” Fanshawe gazes at her through his eyeglass. “Your mother-in-law to be?” he murmurs. Mrs. Brown, not hearing, goes on in a rather shrill tone: “I don’t mean my daughter to walk along with you, sir, till she’s a right to take your arm afore everybody.” Bertram shudders. Fanshawe lifts his hat to Mrs. Brown approvingly. “These sentiments, madam, do you the highest honour. The quality, as you would call them, are not so severe. Their young ladies sit out on the staircases, and flirt in corners with their young men, and meet them in these sylvan groves with a groom as chaperon, without any certainty that matrimony will ever follow. But then the _demi-vierge_ is probably confined to the Upper Ten.” “I don’t know about the ways o’ the gentry, sir,” says Mrs. Brown; “in our street we’re respectable though we _are_ back o’ Portman Square.” “Madam! Juvenal himself never implied anything so crushing! Bertram, I ask again, is this good lady about to be your mother-in-law?” “Don’t be a fool.” “Well, dear madam, it is but right that, standing in this future relation to my friend, you should know this fact: Mr. Bertram has had a very large property left him.” “Lawk a mussy, sir!” “But he is inclined to refuse it on account of his social principles, with which, no doubt, you are acquainted. Now, dear madam, tell us freely your opinion as a person of sound common sense, and one who is about to be closely allied to him. Should he refuse it, or should he accept it?” “Dearie, dearie, sir! How can anybody hev left good money to such a gawk!”