Fanshawe laughs aloud: “When Truth comes out of her well she is seldom polite! Never mind, Mrs. Brown, you can make your peace with your son-in-law some other time. Only tell us now, for we are going to the lawyers on this momentous errand. Ought he to accept or to refuse?” Annie’s mother is flattered at the deference to her opinion. “Well, sir, it ain’t for the like o’ me to judge for the likes o’ you. But, if ye want my plain opinion, it is this ’un: if he take the proputty he’ll _look_ silly. But if he don’t take it he’ll _be_ silly; and he’ll be sorry all his life.” “Mrs. Brown,” says Bertram, “your daughter would not say so.” “Likely not, sir. She’s a slim snippet of a girl as haven’t felt any o’ the weight o’ livin’ yet. When she hev she’ll know a full money-box is the softest pillar one can lay a tired head on any night.” “Mrs. Brown, the classic form of Socrates dwindles before yours! I place you immediately upon the staff of the _Torch_.” Mrs. Brown is puzzled. “I don’t hold with torches, sir. Sam’s link-boy, last week in the great fog, flourishing one about like a fool, set fire to all the straw--such a piece o’ work--and Sam warn’t hinsured.” “I wince under the moral lesson which you convey by your apologue to my journal, but----” “How much longer are you going to waste in chaffing this woman?” says Bertram, very angrily. “There’s an empty hansom passing. Take it.” “Take it yourself. Mrs. Brown, your lips drop pearls of wisdom. Yet you are servile, Mrs. Brown. Are we not all equal before the great Bona Dea of Nature?” “Equal, sir?” repeats Mrs. Brown, with fine scorn. “That’s _his_ rot; yet when he come to our place one day, and we was eatin’ good Dutch cheese and ’errings, he well-nigh fainted at the stink on ’em!” Fanshawe laughs delightedly. “He live on peaches and pinehapples, he do,” she continued, with a snort; “and he’s spoilt a good seasonable chance o’ settlin’ herself as my daughter had with the young man round the corner----” “Shut up that jaw, Fanshawe!” cries Bertram, falling into low language in his wrath. “Will you go to Folliott and Hake’s or not?” asks his friend. “I will go to Satan’s self to stop you chaffing this woman. Look how those people are laughing.” Bertram calls the passing hansom and gets into it; Fanshawe follows him, and waves his hand to Mrs. Brown. “You must come and dine with me at Richmond, Mrs. Socrates!” Cicely and her cousin are sitting under a tree near the end of the Ladies’ Mile with some men standing before them and talking to them, when Marlow again approaches, diffident, but in ill-concealed triumph. “Oh, Lady Jane,” he says eagerly, not venturing to address Cicely directly, “I’ve come back ’cos I’ve such a bit of news; am authorised to tell it; may put it in the _Morning Post_ to-morrow. I’ve seen ‘the penny bunch of violets,’ and by all that’s awful, she’s a washerwoman’s daughter, and Bertram’s going to marry her. It’s Annieism you see, not Altruism.”