“Well, if Lord Worth don’t want to be at the trouble of ordering our lives, so much the better,” said Peregrine. “You want to cut a dash in town, and I daresay I can find plenty of amusement if we haven’t a crusty old guardian to spoil the fun.”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Taverner, a trifle doubtfully. “But in common civility we must ask his permission to set up house in London. I do hope we shall not find him set against us, regarding it as an imposition. I mean: perhaps thinking that my uncle might rather have been appointed than himself. It must appear very singular to him. It is an awkward business, Perry.”

A grunt being the only response to this, she said no more, but leaned back in her corner and perused the unsatisfactory communications she had received from Lord Worth.

It was an awkward business. His lordship, who must, she reflected, be going on for fifty-five or -six years of age, showed a marked disinclination to trouble himself with the affairs of his wards, and although this might in some circumstances be reckoned a good, in others it must be found to be a pronounced evil. Neither she nor Peregrine had ever been farther from home than to Scarborough. They knew nothing of London and had no acquaintance there to guide them. The only persons known to them in the whole town were their uncle, and a female cousin living respectably, but in a small way, in Kensington. This lady Miss Taverner must rely upon to present her into society, for her uncle, a retired Admiral of the Blue, had lived upon terms of such mutual dislike and mistrust with her father as must preclude her from seeking either his support or his acquaintance.