“Nonsense!” replied her practical sister. “If that were all, pray why should Mama take the letter to my father? I regard the matter as settled already. You are going to London for the Season.”

“Oh, if it could be so indeed!” said Arabella, trembling.

Harry, who had abandoned knot-making in favour of trying to stand on his head, overbalanced at this moment, and fell in a heap on the floor, together with a chair, Sophia’s work-box, and a hand-screen, which Margaret had been painting before succumbing to the superior attraction of The Ladies’ Monthly Museum. Beyond begging him not to be such an ape, none of his sisters censured his clumsiness. He picked himself up, remarking scornfully that only a girl would make such a fuss about a mere visit to London. “The slowest thing!” he said. “I should like to know what you think you would do there!”

“Oh, Harry, how can you be so stupid? The balls! The theatres! Assemblies!” uttered Arabella, in choked accents,

“I thought you were going there to form an eligible connection,” said Betsy. “That is what Mama said, for I heard her.”

“Then you had no business to be listening!” said Sophia tartly.

“What’s an eligible connection?” demanded Harry, beginning to juggle with several reels of sewing-silk, which had spilled out of the work-box on to the floor.

“I’m sure I don’t know!”

“I do,” offered the invalid. “It’s a splendid marriage, of course. And then Bella will invite Sophy and Meg and me to stay with her in London, and we shall all find rich husbands!”

“That I shall certainly not do, miss!” declared Arabella. “Let me tell you that no one will invite you anywhere until you have a little more conduct!”

“Well, Mama did say it,” argued Betsy, in a whining voice. “And you need not think I do not know about such things, because—”

Sophia interrupted her ruthlessly. “If, Betsy, you do not desire me to tell Papa of your shocking lack of delicacy, I advise you to take yourself off to the nursery—where you belong!”