“But I’ve always been told that if one’s pile’s big, real big, one can always go anywhere?” she ventured to say, unconscious of the cynical character of her remark. “You can go to Court _here_, if that’s your ideal. You do go,” replied her teacher with a slighting accent of contempt which sounded like high treason to the mind of the Ulster loyalist; “but it don’t follow you can get in elsewhere. It just depends on lots of chances. Some people never get into the world at all; merely because they don’t spend their money cleverly at the onset.” “Perhaps they spare at the spigot and pour out at the bung-hole, my lady,” said Mrs. Massarene in homely metaphor. “There’s a-many has that fault, I have it myself. It’s all I can do still to hold myself from saving the candle-ends.” “Good heavens! Do you really mean it?” “I do, indeed, ma’am,” said the mistress of Harrenden House. “When I see them beautiful wax-lights, just burned an inch or two, and going to be taken away by them wasteful servants----” Her companion laughed, infinitely diverted. “But it’s all electric light here!” “Not in the bedrooms. I wouldn’t have the uncanny thing in the bedrooms. You see, my lady,” she added timidly in confidential whispers, “William should have led me up to all this grandeur gradual. But he didn’t. He always said, ‘We’ll scrape on this side and dash on the other.’ So till we come over to be gentlefolks, I had to cook and sweep, and pinch and spare, and toil and moil, and I can’t get out of the habit. On the child he always spent; but on naught else not a cent till we came to Europe.” “Ah, by the way, this daughter,” said Mouse, suddenly roused to the perception that there was an unknown factor in the lives of these humble people. “Where is she? I have never seen her. She is out, I think?” Over the pallid, puffy, sorrowful face of the poor harassed aspirant to smart society there came a momentary brightness. “Yes, ma’am; she’s what you call ‘out’; I presented her myself,” said Mrs. Massarene with pride. “But where is she now?” “Kathleen--Katherine--is in India, my lady.” “Good gracious! Why?” “Well, she’s great friends with the Marquis of Framlingham’s daughters,” said Mrs. Massarene, feeling sure this time she was safe. “What! Sherry and Bitters?” cried Lady Kenilworth. Sherry and Bitters was the nickname which his caustic but ever courteous wit had earned for Lord Framlingham in that London world which he had left for an Indian presidency. She was vexed with herself for not having thought sooner of asking for this daughter and taking her under her own wing. Mrs. Massarene was bewildered by the exclamation; but she was sure of her ground this time, and was not alarmed. “Lord and Lady Framlingham, ma’am,” she repeated with zest. “It’s cruel hard on me to lose her for so long, but as they’re such grand folks one couldn’t in reason object.”