You wouldn't refuse her that ?" Jeff rose abruptly and went across to the fire to knock the ashes from his pipe.

Having done so, he remained bent for several seconds, as though he were trying to read his fortune in the dying embers.

Then very slowly he straightened himself and spoke.
"I think you forget," he said, "that Colonel Elliot was the son of an earl." But Granny Grimshaw remained unabashed and wholly unimpressed.

She laid down the poker with decision.

"I was never one to sneer at good birth," she said.