help to get things
straight, if we go there."

"Oh, you'll go there all right, if Walter has made up his mind about
it," said Cicely. "Father thinks he will hold out, but he knows, really,
that he won't. That's what makes him so wild."

Both the girls laughed. "He is a funny old thing," said Muriel
apologetically, "but he has been very nice to me."

"Only because you have got ten thousand pounds, my dear, and are the
right sort of match for Walter. He wouldn't be very nice to you if
Walter had found you at Melbury Park; not even if you had your ten
thousand pounds. Oh dear, I wish I had ten thousand pounds."

"What would you do with it?"

"I should travel. At any rate I should go away from Kencote. Muriel, I
am sick to death of it."

"Ah, that is because it seems dull after London. You haven't told me a
word about all that you have been doing, and I have been talking about
myself all the time."

"I didn't care a bit about London. I didn't enjoy it at all--except the
opera."

"Don't try to be _blasee_, my dear girl. Of course you enjoyed it."

"I tell you I didn't. Look here, Muriel, really it _is_ unfair the way
the boys have everything in our family and the girls have nothing."

"I do think it is a shame you are not allowed to hunt."

"It isn't only that. It is the same with everything. I have seen it much
more plainly since I went to London."

"Well, my dear, you went to a Court Ball, and to all the best houses.
The boys don't do more than that. I shouldn't do as much if I went to
London in the season."

"Yes, I went. And I went because Cousin Humphrey took the trouble to get
cards for us. He is an old darling. Do you suppose father would have
taken the smallest trouble about it--for me and mother?"

"He knows all the great people. I suppose a Clinton is as good as
anybody."

"Yes, a _man_ Clinton. That is just it. Dick and Humphrey go everywhere
as a matter of course. I saw enough of it to know what society in London
means. It is like a big family; you meet the same people night after
night, and everybody knows everybody else--that is in the houses that
Cousin Humphrey got us invited to. Dick and Humphrey know everybody like
that; they were part of the family; and mother and I were just country
cousins who knew nobody."

"Well, of course, they are there all the time and you were only up for a
fortnight. Didn't they introduce you to people?"

"O yes. Dick and Humphrey are kind enough. They wante