“I don’t know,” she began, “I’m afraid I could never sit in a stranger’s house and insist on being given money.  It’s so—­so high-handed, like a highwayman or something.”

“Think of the cause,” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, “not of your own feelings.”

“Yes, of course, but ... well, if there is a deficit, I can always raise my own subscription to cover it.”  She smiled happily at this solution of the problem.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley sniffed.

“‘The conies are a feeble folk,’” she quoted rudely.  “Well, good-bye.  I shall send over all the papers and collecting books to-morrow.  Muriel and I go off to London on Friday en route for the south.  It will be pleasant to have a change and meet some interesting people.  Muriel was just saying it’s a cabbage’s life we live in Priorsford.  I often wonder we stay here....”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley went home a very angry woman.  After dinner, sitting with Muriel before the fire in the glittering drawing-room, she discussed the matter.

“I know what’ll be the end of it,” she said.  “You saw what a fuss Miss Reston made of Jean the other day when we called?  Depend upon it, she knew the money was coming.  I dare say she and her brother are as poor as church mice—­those aristocrats usually are—­and Jean’s money will come in useful.  Oh, we’ll see her Lady Bidborough yet....  I tell you what it is, Muriel, the way this world’s managed is past speaking about.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was knitting a stocking for her son Gordon (her hands were seldom idle), and she waved it in her exasperation as she talked.

“Here are you, meant, as anyone can see, for the highest position, and instead that absurd little Jean is to be cocked up, a girl with no more dignity than a sparrow, who couldn’t keep her place with a washerwoman.  I’ve heard her talking to these cottage women as if they were her sisters.”

Muriel leant back in her chair and seemed absorbed in balancing her slipper on her toe.

“My dear mother,” she said, “why excite yourself?  It isn’t clever of you to be so openly annoyed.  People will laugh.  I don’t say I like it any better than you do, but I hope I have the sense to purr congratulations.  We can’t help it anyway.  You and I aren’t attracted to Jean, but there’s no use denying most people are.  And what’s more, they keep on liking her.  She isn’t a person people get easily tired of.  I wish I knew her secret.  I suppose it is charm—­a thing that can’t be acquired.”

“What nonsense, Muriel!  I wonder to hear you.  I’d like to know who has charm if you haven’t.  It is a silly word anyway.”