inchin, "for one of the City people belonging to her
has died lately, and left her--I can't tell you how many thousands.
Indeed, they've heaps of money, and now he's got the regiment he ought
to retire. And I must say, I think it's very hard on you, dear Mrs.
Buller. With all your family, senior officer's wife's accommodation
would be little enough, for a long voyage."

"Which is no reason why my wife should have better accommodation than
she is entitled to, more than any other lady on board," observed Uncle
Buller. "The Quartermaster's wife has more children than we have, and
you know how much room she will get."

"Quartermaster's wife!" muttered Mrs. Minchin. "She would have been
accommodated with the women of the regiment if we had gone home three
months ago (at which time Quartermaster Curling was still only a
sergeant)."

Uncle Buller made no reply. He was not fond of Mrs. Minchin, and he
never disputed a point with her.

One topic of the day was "sales." We all had to sell off what we did not
want to take home, and the point was to choose the right moment for
doing so.

"I shan't be the first," said Aunt Theresa decidedly. "The first sales
are always failures somehow. People are depressed. Then they know that
there are plenty more to come, and they hang back. But further on,
people have just got into an extravagant humour, and would go
bargain-hunting to fifty sales a day. Later still, they find out that
they've got all they want."

"And a great deal that they don't want," put in Uncle Buller.

"Which is all the same thing," said Aunt Theresa. "So I shall sell about
the middle." Which she did, demanding her friends' condolences
beforehand on the way in which her goods and chattels would be "given
away," and receiving their congratulations afterwards upon the high
prices that they fetched.

To do Aunt Theresa justice, if she was managing, she was quite honest.

[Eleanor is shocked by some of the things I say about people in our own
rank of life. She believes that certain vulgar vices, such as cheating,
lying, gluttony, petty gossip, malicious mischief-making, etc., are
confined to the lower orders, or, as she wisely and kindly phrases it,
to people who know no better. She laughs at me, and I laugh at myself,
when I say (to support my own views) that I know more of the world than
she does; since what I know of the world beyond this happy corner of it
I learned when I was a mere child. But though we laugh,