I dare say she and her brother are as poor as church mice--those aristocrats usually are--and Jean's money will come in useful.

Oh, we'll see her Lady Bidborough yet....

I tell you what it is, Muriel, the way this world's managed is past speaking about." Mrs.Duff-Whalley was knitting a stocking for her son Gordon (her hands were seldom idle), and she waved it in her exasperation as she talked.
"Here are you, meant, as anyone can see, for the highest position, and instead that absurd little Jean is to be cocked up, a girl with no more dignity than a sparrow, who couldn't keep her place with a washerwoman.
I've heard her talking to these cottage women as if they were her sisters." Muriel leant back in her chair and seemed absorbed in balancing her slipper on her toe.
"My dear mother," she said, "why excite yourself?
It isn't clever of you to be so openly annoyed.

People will laugh.

I don't say I like it any better than you do, but I hope I have the sense to purr congratulations.
We can't help it anyway.