"Good night, good night!" Then the man did go. For a moment or two Lord Hampstead felt actually angry with his friend. Could it be that Roden should make so little of his sister's name as to talk about her to the Post Office clerks,--to so mean a fellow as this! And yet the man certainly knew the fact of the existing engagement. Hampstead thought it impossible that it should have travelled beyond the limits of his own family. It was natural that Roden should have told his mother; but unnatural,--so Hampstead thought,--that his friend should have made his sister a subject of conversation to any one else. It was horrible to him that a stranger such as that should have spoken to him about his sister at all. But surely it was not possible that Roden should have sinned after that fashion. He soon resolved that it was not possible. But how grievous a thing it was that a girl's name should be made so common in the mouths of men! After that he sauntered into the smoking-room, where were congregated the young men who were staying in the house. "That's a kind of thing that happens only once a year," said Hautboy, speaking to all the party; "but I cannot, for the life of me, see why it should happen at all." "Your governor finds that it succeeds in the county," said one. "He polishes off a whole heap at one go," said another. "It does help to keep a party together," said a third. "And enables a lot of people to talk of dining at Castle Hautboy without lying," said a fourth. "But why should a lot of people be enabled to say that they'd dined here?" asked Hautboy. "I like to see my friends at dinner. What did you think about it, Hampstead?" "It's all according to Hampstead's theories," said one. "Only he'd have had the tinkers and the tailors too," said another. "And wouldn't have had the ladies and gentlemen," said a third. "I would have had the tailors and tinkers," said Hampstead, "and I would have had the ladies and gentlemen, too, if I could have got them to meet the tailors and tinkers;--but I would not have had that young man who got me out into the hall just now." "Why,--that was Crocker, the Post Office clerk," said Hautboy. "Why shouldn't we have a Post Office clerk as well as some one else? Nevertheless, Crocker is a sad cad." In the mean time Crocker was walking home to Penrith in his dress boots. CHAPTER XIII. THE BRAESIDE HARRIERS.