That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now,
and mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly
didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of
under L4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had
her portrait in the _Queen_ because she gave a large subscription to
the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of
Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should
judge, from certain indications. I expect _she_ will retire from the
'Hotels,' some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with
her money.... She'll have _her_ portrait in the _Queen_ some day as
a Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society!... And yet she's
such a gambler and a rake that she _may_ get pinched over the White
Slave traffic.... I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the
other day, fearing every moment to see mother's name mixed up with
it, or else an allusion to her 'Hotels.' But I fancy she has been
wise enough--indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned
her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her
chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the Continent
only--Austria, Alsace, Bohemia, Belgium, Italy, the Rhineland,
Paris, Russia, Poland. Knowing what we British people are, can't you
almost predict the _bias_ of Aunt Liz's mind? How she would solace
herself that her dividends were not derived from the prostitution of
English girls but only of 'foreigners'?.
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