Another remarkable member of the community was Mrs Chouler, the wife of the aged gamekeeper, whose conjugal indignation was aroused one evening by the following incident. The order of the day, or rather night, had been charades, and finding that the hour was not late, we determined to eke out our performance with a word which had a local and limited interest. The day had been memorable to the family circle, on account of our young lord having made his first appearance in full and regular costume of the Pytchley Hunt. To commemorate so auspicious an event, we chose the word “Althorp.” First scene—the whole of the Dramatic Company assembled on the stage. Second scene—the great “Thorpe,” the stately house-steward before mentioned in solitary splendour. Third scene—Viscount Althorp in full hunting garb. The curtain fell amid deafening plaudits. Next day we called on Mrs Chouler, in her pretty house at the end of the avenue, and inquired her opinion of last night’s performance. “Well, Miss Mary,” she said, “of course if my lord thought proper, it was all right, but I think it struck most people as very odd that Thorpe should be bowing and scraping on the stage, when Chouler has lived in the family years and years before him.” Our expostulations were useless, it was in vain we tried to point out that “_all Chouler_” would not have answered, and I feel that to her dying day the memory of that evening’s festivity rankled in the mind of that faithful retainer. Another time I paid Mrs Chouler a visit in company with what she used to call “The two Captains,” my brother Cavendish, and Captain Quin, R.N., Lord Spencer’s nephew. Says the latter: “You have a very good memory—can you tell me the name of the vessel my uncle Bob[64] had, in such and such a year? Neither Lord Spencer nor I can remember?” After a little discussion on the subject, Captain Quin suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, yes, by-the-by, I know now; it was the _Owen Glendower_.” “To be sure, sir, to be sure, that is it; I knew it was something of a sea-nymph.” Footnote 64: The Honourable Robert Spencer R.N. The Choulers were an estimable couple, the old husband survived his wife many years, and when I last saw him, shortly before his death, still wearing his velveteen shooting-coat, with his long white hair falling on his shoulders, he looked like a figure out of one of Rembrandt’s beautiful pictures which had stepped out of its frame. He lived to the age of ninety-six.