Three thousand pounds! It was a fortune, and on that Sunday when
Henrietta was to pay her first visit to Mrs. Batty, Aunt Caroline,
turning the girl about to see that nothing was amiss, said warningly,
'You are walking into the lion's den, Henrietta. Don't let one of
those young cubs gobble you up. I know James Batty, an attractive man,
but he loves money, and he knows our affairs. He married his own wife
because she was a butcher's daughter.'

'A wholesale butcher,' Sophia murmured in extenuation, 'and I am sure
he loved her.'

'And butchers,' Caroline went on, 'always amass money. It positively
inclines one to vegetarianism, though I'm sure nuts are bad for the
complexion.'

'I don't intend to be eaten yet,' Henrietta said gaily. She was very
much excited and she hardly heeded Sophia's whisper at the door:

'It's not true, dear--the kindest people in the world, but Caroline
has such a sense of humour.'

Henrietta found that the Batty lions were luxuriously housed. The
bright yellow gravel crunched under her feet as she walked up the
drive; the porch was bright with flowering plants arranged in tiers; a
parlourmaid opened the door as though she conferred a privilege and,
as Henrietta passed through the hall, she had glimpses of a statue
holding a large fern and another bearing a lamp aloft.

She was impressed by this magnificence; she wished she could pause