"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, and pleased to hear the kinship acknowledged. A good family, as families go, though I say it. We have held on to Dangan since Harry Fifth's time; and to our name since Guy of Welswe was made a thane by Athelstan. We have a knack, ma'am, of staying the course: small in the build but sound in the wind. It did me good, to-day, to see that son of yours step out for the last round." "Excuse me--" put in Samuel, pushing a candle aside and craning forward (he was short-sighted) for a better look at the visitor. "Ha? You have not heard? Well, well--oughtn't to tell tales out of school, and certainly not to the Usher: but your mother and I, sir, had the fortune, this morning, to witness a bout of fisticuffs--Whig against Tory--and perhaps it will not altogether distress you to learn that the Whig took a whipping. I like that boy of yours, ma'am: he has breed. I do not forget"--with another bow--"his mother's descent from the Annesleys of Anglesea and Valentia: but she will forgive me that, while watching him, I thought rather of his blood derived from my own great-great-grandfather Robert, and of our common ancestors--Walter, the king's standard-bearer, Edward, who carried the heart of the Bruce to Palestine--but I weary Mr. Matthew perhaps?" "Not at all, sir," the apothecary protested: rubbing a lump of sugar on the rind of a lemon. "You will suffer me to mix you a glass of punch while I listen? I am a practical man, who has been forced to make his own way in the world, and has made it, I thank God. I never found these ancestors of any use to me; but if one of them had time and leisure to carry the heart of the Bruce to Jerusalem I hope I have the leisure to hear about it. Did he return, may I ask?" "He did not, sir. The Saracens slew him before the Holy Sepulchre, and in fact the undertaking was, as you would regard it, unprofitable. But it gave us the palmer-shells on our coat of arms-- argent, a cross sable, in each corner three escallops of the last. I believe, ma'am, the coat differs somewhat in your husband's branch of the family?" He spread a hand on the table so that the candle-light fell on his signet ring. Mrs. Wesley smiled. "We keep the scallops, sir." "Scallops!" grunted the apothecary. "Better for you, Susanna, if your husband had ever found the oyster!" Garrett Wesley glanced at him from under his badger-gray brows. "We may be coming to the oyster, sir, if you have patience. Crest, a wivern proper: motto, 'God is love.' I am thinking, ma'am, a child of yours might find some use for that motto, since children of my own I have none." "There could be none nobler, sir," Mrs. Wesley answered. "'Tis his then, ma'am, if you can spare me your son Charles."