“Thank you very much.”

Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility. When her lifework was completed, and summed up in those beautiful words: “A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury.⁠ ⁠…” then she would utter a grateful Nunc dimittis and depart in peace⁠—to a better world, if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law’s more dignified establishment. For there was no doubt that eligibility meant not only eligibility as a husband.