It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse.

So the Miss Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives.

Lucy married an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.
Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.
But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable to maintain another year.
'Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a lodging at Bath,' said Colonel Lorimer.

'If you don't like Bath all the year round you can stay with your sisters.' 'That is the last thing I am likely to do,' answered Georgina; 'my sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor.

They are quite intolerable now they are married and rich.