Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) RICH RELATIVES _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT CARNIVAL SINISTER STREET: VOL. I SINISTER STREET: VOL. II GUY AND PAULINE SYLVIA SCARLETT SYLVIA AND MICHAEL POOR RELATIONS THE VANITY GIRL [Copyright: Martin Secker] RICH RELATIVES _By COMPTON MACKENZIE_ LONDON: MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXXI TO ALICE AND CHRISTOPHER STONE THIS THEME IN A MINOR NOVEMBER 15TH, 1920 _Chapter One_ It may have been that the porter at York railway station was irritated by Sunday duty, or it may have been that the outward signs of wealth in his client were not conspicuous; whatever the cause, he spoke rudely to her. Yet Jasmine Grant was not a figure that ought to have aroused the insolence of a porter, even if he _was_ on Sunday duty. To be sure, her black clothes were not fashionable; and a journey from the South of Italy to the North of England, having obliterated what slight pretensions to cut they might once have possessed, had left her definitely draggled. Although the news of having to wait nearly five hours for the train to Spaborough had brought tears of disappointment into her eyes, and although the appeal of tears had been spoilt by their being rubbed off with the back of a dusty glove, Jasmine's beauty was there all the time--a dark, Southern beauty of jetty lashes curling away from brown eyes starry-hearted; a slim Southern charm of sunburnt, boyish hands. Something she had of a young cypress in moonlight, something of a violoncello, with that voice as deep as her eyes. But for the porter she was only something of a nuisance, and when she began to lament again the long wait he broke in as rudely as before: "Now it's not a bit of good you nagging at me, miss. If the 4.42 goes at 4.42, I can't make it go before 4.42, can I?" Then perhaps the thought of his own daughters at home, or perhaps the comforting intuition that there would be shrimps for tea at the close of this weary day, stirred his better nature. "Why don't you take a little mouch round the walls? That's what people mostly does who get stuck in York. They mouch round the walls if it's fine, like it is, and if it's raining they mouch round the Minster. And I've known people, I have, who've actually come to York to mouch round the walls, so you needn't be so aggravated at having to see them whether you like it or not, as you might say. And now," he concluded, "I suppose the next thing is you'll want to put your luggage in the cloak-room!" He spoke with a sense of sacrilege, as if Jasmine had suggested laying her luggage on the high altar of the Minster. "Well, that means me having to go and get a truck," he grumbled, "because the cloak-room's at the other end of the station from what we are here."