Coffee came in--one cup for the Captain--for the rest of the party avoided that exciting beverage. And on that cup was a picture of--His Grace the Duke of Wellington! During our visit to the Roman camp, my mother had borrowed Mr Squills's chaise, and driven over to our market town, for the express purpose of greeting the Captain's eyes with the face of his old chief. My uncle changed colour, rose, lifted my mother's hand to his lips, and sate himself down again in silence. "I have heard," said the Captain, after a pause, "that the Marquis of Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman--and that is saying not a little, for he measures seventy-five inches from the crown to the sole--when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his majesty had occupied at the Tuilleries--it was a kingly attention, (my Lord Hastings, you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets)--a kingly attention to a king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the same royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly, that we men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin." "You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to see you single. You must marry again!" My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed somewhat heavily. "Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor brother," continued my father, "with only your little girl for a companion." "And the past!" said my uncle; "the past, that mighty world--" "Do you still read your old books of chivalry, Froissart and the Chronicles, Palmerin of England and Amadis of Gaul?" "Why," said my uncle, reddening, "I have tried to improve myself with studies a little more substantial. And" (he added with a sly smile) "there will be your great book for many a long winter to come." "Um!" said my father, bashfully. "Do you know," quoth my uncle, "that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent woman; full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?" "Is not she, uncle!" cried I, leaving my fox in a corner. "Oh, if you could have heard her tell me the tale of King Arthur and the enchanted lake, or the grim white women!" "I have already heard her tell both," said my uncle. "The deuce you have, brother! My dear, we must look to this. These captains are dangerous gentlemen in an orderly household. Pray, where could you have had the opportunity of such private communications with Mrs Primmins?" "Once," said my uncle, readily, "when I went into her room, while she mended my stock; and once--" he stopped short, and looked down. "Once when? out with it." "When she was warming my bed," said my uncle, in a half whisper. "Dear!" said my mother, innocently, "that's how the sheets came by that bad hole in the middle. I thought it was the warming-pan." "I am quite shocked!" faltered my uncle.