"Go on! go on!" in five different voices of impatience.

"Well, then, father has sent a message by mother to the effect that I am
to dine with them to-night--_I_, if you please--_I_!--you must own"
(lengthening my neck as I speak, and throwing up my untidy flax head)
"that sweet Nancies are looking up in the world."

A silence of stupefaction falls on the assembly. After a pause--

"YOU?"

"Yes, _I!_"

"And how do you account for it?"

"I believe," reply I, simpering, "that our future benefac--, no! I
really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his
face, as Bobby did last night. Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did
not appear yesterday. I suppose he thought that I looked so _very_ grown
up, that they must be keeping me in pinafores by force."

Algy has risen. He is coming toward me. He has pulled me off my chair.
He has taken me by the shoulders, and is turning me round to face the
others.

"Allow me!" he says, bowing, and making me bow, too, "to introduce you
to the future legatee!--Barbara, my child, you and I are _nowhere_. This
depraved old man has clearly no feeling for symmetry of form or face; a
long career of Begums has utterly vitiated his taste. To-morrow he will
probably be clamoring for Tou Tou's company."