"Well, just after that, when I was going to kiss him and go, papa stopped me, and said he had something to say, only he mustn't be too long because he had to finish a paper on, I think, 'Some Technical Terms in use in Cnidos in the Sixth Century, B.C.' Or was it...?" "That was it. That one'll do beautifully. Go ahead!" "Well--of course it doesn't matter. It was like papa, anyhow.... Oh, yes--what he said then! It was about Aunt Priscilla's thousand pounds. He wanted to repeat that the interest would be paid to me half-yearly if by chance I married Julius or any other man without his consent. 'I wish it to be distinctly understood that if you marry Bradshaw it will be against my consent. But I only ask you to promise me this, Laetitia, that you won't marry any other man against my consent at present.' I promised, and he said I was a dutiful daughter. There won't be any trouble with papa." "Don't look like it! I say, Tishy, that thousand pounds is very nice. How much will you have? Forty pounds a year?" "It's more than that. It's gone up, somehow--sums of money do--or down. They're never the same as at first. I'm so glad about it. It's not as if I brought Julius absolutely nothing." "How much is it?" Sally is under the impression that sums of money that exist on the word of signed documents only, and whose materialisation can only be witnessed by bankers, are like fourpence, one of whose properties is that it _is_ fourpence. They are not analogous, and Laetitia is being initiated into the higher knowledge. "Well, dear, you see the stock has gone up, and it's at six three-quarters. You must ask Julius. He can do the arithmetic." "Does that mean it's sixty-seven pounds ten?" "You'd better ask Julius. Then, you know, there's the interest." Sally asked what interest. "Why, you see, Aunt Priscilla left it to me eleven years ago, so there's more." But a vendor of mauve and magenta woollen goods, known to Sally as "the beach-woman," was working up towards them. "That woman never goes when she comes," said Sally. "Let's get up and go!" * * * * *