But throughout the changes, Colonel Orpington and his daughter are among the company who stay on; both of them are voted excellent company, for the nights are beginning to grow long now, and the dinner-hour has been fixed at seven instead of eight; and there is a great talk of and preparation for certain amateur theatricals, of which the Colonel, who is an old hand at such matters, is stage-manager and principal director, and in which Miss Orpington is to take a leading part. Much astonishment has been privately exhibited by certain of the assembled people that that restlessness which generally characterised "old O.," as he was familiarly termed amongst them, seemed to have abated during his visit to Harbledown Hall; more especially has a calm come over those horribly troublesome slate-quarries and lead-mines in South Wales, which usually took the Colonel so frequently away from his daughter and his friends. The matter is discussed in the smoking-room late at night, long after the well-preserved Colonel has retired to his rest; and Badger Bobus, who is come down to stay at Harbledown on the first breath of there being any possibility of club-hunting, thinks that he ought to keep up the reputation which he acquired by his famous saying on the subject; but the Muse is unpropitious, and all that Bobus can find to remark is, that "it is deuced extraordinary." The long interval which has now elapsed since her father found it necessary to relieve her of his presence does not seem to have had much effect upon Miss Orpington. Truth to tell, whether her revered parent is or is not with her has now become a matter of very small moment with that lady; and when her hostess congratulates herself in supposing that her house must indeed be attractive when that dear Colonel consents to remain there as a fixed star, Miss Orpington merely shrugs her shoulders slightly and expresses no further acquiescence.