The pinnacle of their gay ambition was a Covent Garden Ball. This entertainment had continually to be postponed for lack of funds; for, though a Covent Garden Ball has usually a sober, even a chilling effect upon the company, it has dare-devil pretensions which Maurice and his retinue would not exploit unless they were assured of a conspicuous success. So the Second Empire Masquerade was planned and debated a long time before it actually happened. That it happened at all was due to the death of Maurice's great-aunt, who left him one hundred pounds. This legacy being unexpected, was obviously bound to be spent at once. As the legatee pointed out to Jenny one dripping afternoon in early January, as they sat together in the studio: "It's practically like finding money in the road. I know that one day my stockbroker uncle will leave me two thousand pounds. He's told me so often to raise my spirits on wet week-ends at his house. I've planned what to do with that. Every farthing is booked. But this hundred I never thought of. I was beginning to despair of ever raising the cash for Covent Garden, and here it is all of a sudden." "You're not going to spend a hundred pounds in one evening?" Jenny exclaimed. "Not all of it, because you've got to buy yourself some furs and three hats and those silk stockings with peach-colored clocks--oh, yes, and I've got to buy you that necklace of fire opals which we saw in Wardour Street and also that marquise ring, and I've got to buy myself a safety razor and a box of pastels, and I simply must get Thackeray's _Lectures on the English Humorists_ for Fuz." "There won't be much left of your hundred pounds," said Jenny. "Well, let's draw up an estimate. I'll write down the possibles and then we'll delete nearly all of them." Maurice got up from his chair and wandered round the room in search of note-paper. Not being able to find any, he pinned a large sheet of drawing-paper to a board and produced a pencil. "Look at him," laughed Jenny. "Look at the Great Millionaire. Just because he's come into money, he can't write on anything smaller than a blanket." "It's not ostentation," Maurice declared. "It's laziness--a privilege of the very poor, as you ought to know by this time. I can't find any note-paper." "I should think you couldn't. I wonder you can find yourself in this room." "Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny. Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more you can think of?" "You don't mean to say you've taken that unnatural piece of paper just to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads. What would you do with him?" "We want another eight," Maurice declared. "Oh, no, eight's plenty."