'I further inquired,' pursued the relentless Sylvana, 'about a person of the name of Marley.' 'How ridiculous!' exclaimed Mrs. Tomkin-Jones; 'how should any one know about Mrs. Marley? She was a common menial, a nurse, nothing more.' 'There is no knowing what one may learn by mentioning names.' 'Of course you heard nothing of her?' 'I did not expect to hear from my friend at Axminster, but she has a friend married at Seaton, and she will write to her.' 'I insist on you desisting from this sort of thing,' said the doctor's widow. 'We were dropping out of consideration in Bath because we did not entertain.' 'And, mamma, you are leaping――――' 'Leaping, Sylvana, be decent; I never leap.' 'Leaping into notoriety, mother, if you choose to patronise a young woman of equivocal origin.' 'My dear,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, 'you entirely forget who I am.' 'Not at all. It is because you are a Tomkin-Jones that I am constrained to look after you. There was a peacock in Bedfont that got into the lodge and spread its tail before the kitchen fire, and it blazed like a Catherine-wheel. The funny thing is that all that summer the peacock continued to bristle up and spread the bare and charred stumps, wholly unconscious that it was making itself ridiculous. Take care, mother, that you have feathers before you make a spread.' 'You forget what is due to me,' said the widow angrily. 'I am solicitous for you. Have you ever asked Winefred, or her father, what was her mother's maiden name?' 'No.' 'But I have.' 'My dear!' 'I asked Winefred, and she flared up and refused an answer. I next asked Mr. Holwood, and he became so nervous and bewildered as to be speechless. That tells its own tale――it does not look nice.' 'How can you, Sylvana? What an improper mind you possess! Besides――such questions――most reprehensible.' 'This must be searched to the bottom.' 'But――but!' gasped Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, 'consider the tureen!' 'You cannot afford to know the truth,' pursued Sylvana, 'because you have bought a soup-tureen and hired a butler! So, to preserve both, you thrust your head into a bush.' Then Jesse, who had been seated in the window engaged in domestic needlework, darning a kitchen tablecloth that a stupid maid had cut through when slicing bread――and had been unnoticed by her mother and sister, as taking no part in the conversation――now started from her chair, threw down the tablecloth, and coming forward, laid her thimble-shod finger on the round rosewood table, and said: