"Glad to see you, Donnie. Glass of sherry? No--well, sit down--won't take a chair!--why's that? Well, we'll be on pleasanter terms soon--you'll find it's really no choice of mine. I can't help using that stupid green room. Here are two more friends coming--not till Wednesday week though--two gentlemen. You may put them in rooms beside one another--wherever you like--only not in the garrets, of course. _Good_ rooms, do ye see." "And what's the gentlemen's names, please, Sir Jekyl," inquired Mrs. Gwynn. "Mr. Strangways, the young gentleman; and the older, as well as I can read it, is Mr. Varbarriere." "Thank ye, sir." The housekeeper having again declined the kindly distinction of a glass of sherry, withdrew. In less than a week guests began to assemble, and in a few days more old Marlowe Hall began to wear a hospitable and pleasant countenance. The people were not, of course, themselves all marvels of agreeability. For instance, Sir Paul Blunket, the great agriculturist and eminent authority on liquid manures, might, as we all know, be a little livelier with advantage. He is short and stolid; he wears a pale blue muslin neck-handkerchief with a white stripe, carefully tied. His countenance, I am bound to say, is what some people would term heavy--it is frosty, painfully shaven, and shines with a glaze of transparent soap. He has small, very light blue round eyes, and never smiles. A joke always strikes him with unaffected amazement and suspicion. Laughter he knows may imply ridicule, and he may himself possibly be the subject of it. He waits till it subsides, and then talks on as before on subjects which interest him. Lady Blunket, who accompanies him everywhere, though not tall, is stout. She is delicate, and requires nursing; and, for so confirmed an invalid, has a surprising appetite. John Blunket, the future baronet, is in the Diplomatic Service, I forget exactly where, and by no means young; and lean Miss Blunket, at Marlowe with her parents, though known to be older than her brother, is still quite a girl, and giggles with her partner at dinner, and is very _naïve_ and animated, and sings arch little chansons discordantly to the guitar, making considerable play with her eyes, which are black and malignant. This family, though neither decorative nor entertaining, being highly respectable and ancient, make the circuit of all the good houses in the county every year, and are wonderfully little complained of. Hither also they had brought in their train pretty little Mrs. Maberly, a cousin, whose husband, the Major, was in India--a garrulous and good-humoured siren, who smiled with pearly little teeth, and blushed easily. At Marlowe had already assembled several single gentlemen too. There was little Tom Linnett, with no end of money and spirits, very good-natured, addicted to sentiment, and with a taste for practical joking too, and a very popular character notwithstanding.