“We have changed our dinner-room, Mr. Dunn,” said Lady Augusta, as they walked along; thus by a mere word suggesting “bygones and long ago.” “And with advantage, I should say,” replied he, easily, as he surveyed the spacious and lofty apartment into which they had just entered. “The old dinner-room was low-ceilinged and gloomy.” “Do you really remember it?” asked she, with a pleasant smile. “An over-good memory has accompanied me through life, Lady Augusta,” said he. And then, as he remarked the rising color of her cheek, quickly added, “It is rarely that the faculty treats me to such grateful recollections as the present.” Lord Glengariffs table was a good specimen of country-house living. All the materials were excellent, and the cookery reasonably good; his wine was exquisite,--the years and epochs connoisseurship loves to dwell upon; but Mr. Dunn ate sparingly and drank little. He had passed forty without gourmand tastes, and no man takes to epicurism after that. His Lordship beheld, not without secret dissatisfaction, his curdiest salmon declined, his wonderful “south-down” sent away scarcely tasted, and, horror of horrors! saw water mixed with his 1815 claret as if it were a “little Bordeaux wine” at a Swiss _table d'hôte_. “Mr. Dunn has no appetite for our coarse country fare, Augusta,” said Lord Glengariff; “you must take him over the cliffs, to-morrow, and let him feel the sharp Glengariff air. There's nothing but hunger for it.” “Pardon me, my Lord, if I say that I accept with gratitude the proposed remedy, though I don't acknowledge a just cause for it. I am always a poor eater.” “Tell him of Beverley, Augusta, tell him of Beverley,” said my Lord. “Oh, it was simply a case similar to your own,” said she, hesitatingly, “and, in all probability, incurred in the same way. The Duke of Beverley, a very hard-worked man, as you know, always at Downing Street at ten, and never leaving it till night, came here two years ago, to pass a few weeks with us, and although hale and stout, to look at, could eat nothing,--that is, he cared for nothing. It was in vain we put in requisition all our little culinary devices to tempt him; he sat down with us, and, like yourself, would fain persuade us that he dined, but he really touched nothing; and, in utter despair, I determined to try what a course of open air and exercise would do.” “She means eight hours a day hard walking, Dunn,” chimed in Lord Glengariff; “a good grouse-shooter's pace, too, and cross country.” “Well, confess that my remedy succeeded,” said she, triumphantly. “That it did. The Duke went back to town fifteen years younger. No one knew him; the Queen did not know him. And to this day he says, 'Whenever I'm hipped or out of sorts, I know what a resource I have in the Glengariff heather.'” It is possible that Davenport Dunn listened with more of interest to this little incident because the hero of it was a Duke and a Cabinet Minister.