One staggers sometimes before the public summing-up of the
amount of their fortunes. These people who have neither blood nor rank,
these men who labour in their business offices, are richer than our
great dukes, at the realising of whose wealth and possessions we have at
times almost turned pale.
"Them!" chaffed a costermonger over his barrow. "Blimme, if some o' them
blokes won't buy Buckin'am Pallis an' the 'ole R'yal Fambly some mornin'
when they're out shoppin'."
The subservient attendants in more than one fashionable shop Betty and
her sister visit, know that Miss Vanderpoel is of the circle, though her
father has not as yet bought or hired any great estate, and his daughter
has not been seen in London.
"Its queer we've never heard of her being presented," one shopgirl says
to another. "Just you look at her."
She evidently knows what her ladyship ought to buy--what can be trusted
not to overpower her faded fragility. The saleswomen, even if they had
not been devoured by alert curiosity, could not have avoided seeing that
her ladyship did not seem to know what should be bought, and that Miss
Vanderpoel did, though she did not direct her sister's selection,
but merely seemed to suggest with delicate restraint.
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