"Wasn't it? But why, do you think, does she beckon people?" "Perhaps she beckons people to show them where the jewels are hidden." "Oh!" cried Fanny; "_why_ did we never think of that before? Of _course_ that is the reason--and they are worth two hundred thousand pounds. We must have the panels in the corridor taken down. I'll make father do it to-morrow. Two hundred thousand pounds: what is that a year?" "Ten thousand." "Fancy father with ten thousand a year!" Mr Bevan shuddered. "We can have a steam yacht, and everything we want. I feel as if I were going mad," said Miss Lambert, with the air of a person who had often been mad before and knew the symptoms. The door opened and Susannah appeared with the punch things. "Susannah, guess what's happened--never mind, you'll know soon. Have you got the lemon and the sugar? That is right." And Miss Lambert, forgetting for a moment fortune, turned her attention to the manufacturing of punch. Susannah withdrew, casting her eyes over Fanny and Charles as she went, and seeming to draw her under-lip after her. When the door was shut, Miss Lambert looked into the punch bowl to see if it was clean, and, having turned a huge spider out of it, went to the sideboard. "You are not going to make punch in this great thing?" "I am," said Fanny, returning with a bottle in each hand and one under her arm. "Go on," said Charles resignedly. "May I smoke?" "Of course, smoke. Open me this champagne." "You are not going to put champagne in punch?" "Everything is good in punch. Father learned how to make it in Moscow, when he was dining with the Hussars there. After dinner a huge bowl was brought in, and everything went in--champagne, whisky, brandy, all the fruit from the dessert; then they set it on fire, and drank it, burning." "Has your father ever made punch like that?" "No, but now I've got him away, I am going to try." Pop went the champagne cork, and the golden wine ran creaming into the bowl. "Now the brandy." "But this will be cold punch." "Yes, it's just as good; milk punch is always cold." "I'm blest if this is milk punch," said Mr Bevan, as he looked fearfully into the bowl; "but go on." "I am going as quick as I can," she replied. Then the whisky went in, and half a tumblerfull of curaçoa also, the lemon cut in slices and the peaches that remained. "I haven't anything more to throw in," said Fanny, casting her eye over the sardines and the ox tongue. "We ought to have grapes and things; no matter, stir it up and set it on fire, and see what it tastes like." "But, my dear child," said the horrified Charles, as he stirred the seething mixture with the old silver ladle into whose belly a guinea had been beaten. "You surely don't expect me to drink this fearful stuff? I thought you were making it for fun." "You taste it and see, but set it on fire first." He struck a match. "It won't catch fire!" he cried. "Knew it wouldn't." "Well, taste it cold; it smells delicious."