He goes to play lawn tennis with them and their youngest brother Cecil, called the Babe; and Lady Usk, under her rose-lined umbrella, sits as umpire, while her lord saunters off disconsolately to an interview with his steward. In these times those interviews are of an unbroken melancholy, and always result in producing the conviction in his mind that Great Britain cannot possibly last out another year. Without the nobility and gentry what will she be? and they will all go to the lands they've bought in America, if they're in luck, and if they aren't will have to turn shoeblacks. "But the new electorate won't have its shoes blacked,--won't even have any shoes to black," suggests Mr. Lanyon, the land-steward, who began life as an oppidan at Eton and captain of an Eight, but has been glad to take refuge from the storm on the estates of his old Eton comrade, a trust which he discharges with as much zeal as discretion, dwelling contentedly in a rose-covered grange on the edge of the home-woods of Surrenden. If Boom finds things at all in order when he comes into possession, it will be wholly due to John Lanyon. In one of the pauses of their game the tennis-players hear the brake and the omnibus returning. None of those whom they bring will be visible until luncheon at two o'clock. "Have you anybody very nice, Lady Usk?" asks Brandolin of his hostess. She hesitates; there are some women that he would call nice, but then they each have their man. "I hardly know," she answers, vaguely. "You don't like many people, if I remember----" "All ladies, surely," says Brandolin, with due gravity. "I'm sure you don't like Grandma Sophy," says the saucy Babe, sitting cross-legged in front of him. He means the Dowager Duchess of Derry, a very unpleasant person of strong principles, called by the profane "Sophia, by the grace of God," because she ruled Ireland in a viceroyalty of short duration and long-enduring mischief. She and Brandolin do not agree, a fact which the Babe has seen and noted with the all-seeing eyes of a petted boy who is too much in his mother's drawing-rooms. "I plead guilty to having offended her Grace Sophia," says Brandolin, "but I conclude that Lady Usk's guests are not all like that most admirable lady." The Babe and his sisters laugh with much irreverent enjoyment; her Grace is not more appreciated by her grandchildren than she was by Ireland. "If I had known you were going to be so kind as to remember us, I would have invited some of your friends," says his hostess, without coming to the rescue of her august mother's name. "I am so sorry; but there is nobody I think who will be very sympathetic to you. Besides, you know them all already." "And is that fatal to sympathy? What a cruel suggestion, dear Lady Usk!" "Sympathy is best new, like a glove. It fits best; you don't see any wrinkles in it for the first hour." "What cynicism! Do you know that I am very fond of old gloves? But, then, I never was a dandy----"