“She is to be one of them, my dear. You know I don’t wish to do anything in secret, Lucy. I wish you to know all my arrangements. If you came to think afterward that your father had taken you by surprise I--should not like it; and now I have got as far as where you ought to live--listen, Lucy,” said the old man. The big document in the writing-case was evidently his one idea. His face brightened as he took it up and spread out the large leaves. As for Lucy, she sighed again very softly. How the will wearied her! But she was heroic, or stoical. She made no sort of stand against it; and after that one soft little protest of nature, went on with her knitting, and listened with great tranquillity. Her father read the paragraphs that he had been consulting Ford about, one by one; and Lucy listened as if he had been reading a newspaper. It awoke no warmer interest in her mind. She had heard so much of it that it did not affect her in any practical way; it seemed a harmless amusement for her father, and nothing more. “Do you think you shall like going to Lady Randolph, Lucy?” “How can I tell, papa? I don’t know Lady Randolph,” Lucy said. “No; but that’s high life, my dear; and here’s humble life, Lucy. I want you to know both; and as for your marriage, you know--” “You do not want me to marry,” said the sensible girl, “and I don’t think I wish it either, papa. But if I ever did, it would not be nice to have to go and ask all these people; and they never would agree. We might be quite sure of that.” “Then you think I have been hard upon you? Always speak to me quite openly, Lucy. I don’t want to be hard upon you, my child--quite the other way.” “Oh, it does not matter at all,” said Lucy, cheerfully, plying her knitting-needles. “I don’t think it is the least likely that I shall ever want to marry. As you have always told me, I shall have plenty to do, and there will be Jock,” she added, after a momentary pause. “You have a great many prejudices about Jock,” her father said, testily: “what difference can he make? He has not so very much to do with you, and he will be in quite a different sphere.” “Do you want me to have nobody belonging to me?” Lucy cried, with a sudden vivacity not without indignation in it, then subdued herself as suddenly. “It doesn’t at all matter,” she said. “And you remember,” said her father almost humbly, “this is only till you are five-and-twenty. It is not for all eternity; you will have plenty of time to marry, or do whatever you please, after that.”