“There is a lazy one, like me,” he would say; and a little pert robin redbreast, a sort of little almoner, who came and superintended the giving away of these charities, gave Sir Gus the greatest amusement. But the people who came to call were not equally amusing. When a man came, he expected Sir Gus to take an interest in the debates, or in the places where the hounds met, and stared, when he knew that Gus, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. And he was not even interested in the parish. When Dolly Stainforth brought up a report of some village catastrophe, Sir Gus was not the one who responded with the greatest liberality. He was not used to have very much money to spare, and he was careful of it. It was not that he loved money, but he had not the habit of spending it lavishly, as we foolish people have. Sometimes he would drive out in a close carriage, to the great contempt of everybody concerned. “The new master, he _be_ a muff,” the people in the porter’s lodge said. Even from that mild exercise, however, he was glad to come in, shivering, and call Brown to put on a great many more coals in the fire. The house was full of schemes for warming it more effectually. Hot water, hot air--all kinds of expedients; and never had so much fuel been used in Markham in the memory of man. “He will ruin my lady in coals,” Brown said; but Sir Gus did not take this into consideration. It was about the greatest pleasure he had in the good fortune which was to make him so happy. In February there came, as there sometimes comes, a spell of bright weather--a few soft, spring-like days--and the poor little gentleman from the tropics brightened along with the crocuses. “It is over at last,” he said, in beatific self-delusion; and he was persuaded to pay a visit to town when Parliament was on the point of meeting, and the general tuning up for the great concert of the season had begun to begin. Here Sir Gus was confided to the charge of Fairfax, who took him into his own house, and roasted him over huge fires, and made little dinners for him, collecting other tropical persons to meet him. But very soon Sir Gus found out that it was not over. He found out that not to be interested in the debates, nor in society, nor in books and pictures, and, above all, not to “know people,” were sad drawbacks to life in London. He sat dumb while his companions talked of meeting So-and-so at Lord What-d’ye-call-’em’s, and of the too-well-known intimacy--“Don’t you know?”--between Sir Robert and Lady John. He stared at the talkers, the poor little foreigner! and tired even of Fairfax’s big fires. The skies that hang so low over the London streets, the rain and muddy ways, or the east wind that parched them into whiteness, made his very soul shrink. That was not at all a successful experiment. He went back on Lady Markham’s hands in March, having ensconced himself now in a coat lined with sables, which buried him still more completely than the big chair.