“Well, if I was so born, I’m not going to fulfil my destiny. I don’t know that courts will know much of me, unless they are some horrid, low, fusty, musty law courts. Heigho! I shudder at the thought of them. No! destiny’s out of it this time for me. But you, Gertrude, you, if you like, are fulfilling your destiny. Didn’t we call you Saint Cecilia, and the Puritan maiden, and Miss Prim, and all that? And there you sit, I declare, dressed in a plain serge, with a plain linen collar and cuffs, your hair confined as tight and brushed as smooth as its inherent rebelliousness will permit, without a ribbon or a ring, and just a cheap jet brooch at a neck you hide as though you were ashamed of it. You might be a nun, or what is it you remind me of? I have it. You only want a poke bonnet and a tambourine and you’re the picture of a Salvation Army lass; but sure the prettiest and the sweetest Salvation Army lass that ever travestied religion.” “Well, I am a Salvation Army lass, if it comes to that; but I don’t know, Eleanor, that I travesty religion. I try to live it, not to parody it.” “You, a Salvation Army lass! Angels and ministers of grace defend us! You, Gertrude, that simply roll in money, you that live in this grand old house, you with a maid of your own a butler like a bishop, a footman with calves that are simply thrown away in Staffordshire, you with a carriage and a lovely pair, and a coachman as gorgeous as the Lord Mayor’s, you a Salvation Army lass! As the Scotch parson said: ‘Good Lord! it’s juist rideeculous!’” “My dear Eleanor, you forget. The house is not mine, the maid, the groom, the coachman, and the carriage and the pair—these are not mine. They are my dear aunt’s. Mine they never may be. Should they be destined some day to be mine, may that day be far, far distant.” “Amen, with all my heart. Your aunt’s a dear. But to all intents and purposes they’re yours, or will be some day, and you know it. I wish I were as certain of heaven. And, heigho! don’t I just wish that some of that filthy dross you Salvationists affect to despise were mine. Money’s just thrown away on you. It’s a ridiculous waste of the good things of life to lavish them on a girl I verily believe would just as soon have a steel as a diamond brooch at her breast, and a slip of velvet round her neck as a rope of pearls.”