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all events, it won’t declare anything at once. It hasn’t de-
clared anything in heaven knows how many years.’
‘Too true,’ said Ada.
‘Yes, but,’ urged Richard, answering what her look sug-
gested rather than her words, ‘the longer it goes on, dcar
cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or oth-
er. Now, is not that reasonable?’
‘You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it,
it will make us unhappy.’
‘But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!’ cried Rich-
ard gaily. ‘We know it better than to trust to it. We only say
that if it SHOULD make us rich, we have no constitutional
objection to being rich. The court is, by solemn settlement
of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that
what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is
not necessary to quarrel with our right.’
‘No,’ Said Ada, ‘but it may be better to forget all about
it.’
‘Well, well,’ cried Richard, ‘then we will forget all about
it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden
puts on her approving face, and it’s done!’
‘Dame Durden’s approving face,’ said I, looking out of
the box in which I was packing his books, ‘was not very vis-
ible when you called it by that name; but it does approve,
and she thinks you can’t do better.’
So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately
began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in
the air as would man the Great Wall of China. He went away
in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much,

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