"My dear--it was--absolutely nothing! Why should it be stranger for Mr. Bradshaw to drive me home to save two hansoms than for you and Dr. Vereker and the Voyseys to go all in one growler?" "Because the Voyseys live just round the corner, quite close. It came to three shillings because it's outside the radius." The irrelevancy of this detail gives Laetitia an excuse for waiving the cab-question, on which her position is untenable. She dilutes it with extraneous matter, and it is lost sight of. "It doesn't matter whether it's cabs or what it is. Mamma's just the same about everything. Even walking up Holland Park Lane after the concert at Kensington Town Hall. I am sure if ever anything was reasonable, that was." She pauses for confirmation--is, in fact, wavering about the correctness of her own position, and weakly seeking reassurance. She is made happier by a nod of assent from Miss Sally. "Awfully reasonable!" is the verdict of the latter. Whatever there is lacking seriousness in the judge's face is too slight to call for notice--a mere twinkle to be ignored. Very little self-deception is necessary, and in this department success is invariable. "I knew you would say so, dear," Tishy continues. "And I'm sure you would about the other things too ... well, I was thinking about tea in Kensington Gardens on Sunday. We have both of us a perfect right to have tea independently, and the only question is about separate tables." "Suppose I come--to make it square." "Suppose you do, dear." And the proposal is a relief evidently. A very slight insight into the little drama that is going on at Ladbroke Grove Road is all that is wanted for the purposes of this story. The foregoing dialogue, ending at the point at which the two young women disappear into the door of No. 287, will be sufficient to give a fairly clear idea of the plot of the performance, and to point to its _denouement_. The exact details may unfold themselves as the story proceeds. The usual thing is a stand-up fight over the love-affair, both parties to which have made up their minds--becoming more and more obdurate as they encounter opposition from without--followed by reconciliations more or less real. Let us hope for the former in the present case, and that Miss Wilson and Mr. Bradshaw's lot may not be crossed by one of those developments of strange inexplicable fury which so often break out in families over the schemes of two young people to do precisely what their parents did before them; and most ungovernably, sometimes, on the part of members who have absolutely no suggestion to make of any alternative scheme for the happiness of either. CHAPTER XIX HOW FENWICK KNEW ALL ABOUT THE MASS. AND HOW BARON KREUTZKAMMER RECOGNISED MR. HARRISSON. LONDON AGAIN!