‘If I go down, I will propose it to him.’ ‘Why if?’ said Mr. Cassilis; ‘sort of thing I should like to see once uncommonly: oxen roasted alive, old armour, and the girls of the village all running about as if they were behind the scenes.’ ‘Is that the way you did it at your majority, George?’ said Lord Fitz-Heron. ‘Egad! I kept my arrival at years of discretion at Brighton. I believe it was the last fun there ever was at the Pavilion. The poor dear king, God bless him! proposed my health, and made the devil’s own speech; we all began to pipe. He was Regent then. Your father was there, Valentine; ask him if he remembers it. That was a scene! I won’t say how it ended; but the best joke is, I got a letter from my governor a few days after, with an account of what they had all been doing at Brandingham, and rowing me for not coming down, and I found out I had kept my coming of age the wrong day.’ ‘Did you tell them?’ ‘Not a word: I was afraid we might have had to go through it over again.’ ‘I suppose old Bellamont is the devil’s own screw,’ said Lord Milford. ‘Rich governors, who have never been hard up, always are.’ ‘No: I believe he is a very good sort of fellow,’ said Lord Valentine; ‘at least my people always say so. I do not know much about him, for they never go anywhere.’ ‘They have got Leander down at Montacute,’ said Mr. Cassilis. ‘Had not such a thing as a cook in the whole county. They say Lord Eskdale arranged the cuisine for them; so you will feed well, Valentine.’ ‘That is something: and one can eat before Easter; but when the balls begin----’ ‘Oh! as for that, you will have dancing enough at Montacute; it is expected on these occasions: Sir Roger de Coverley, tenants’ daughters, and all that sort of thing. Deuced funny, but I must say, if I am to have a lark, I like Vauxhall.’ ‘I never met the Bellamonts,’ said Lord Milford, musingly. ‘Are there any daughters?’ ‘None.’ ‘That is a bore. A single daughter, even if there be a son, may be made something of; because, in nine cases out of ten, there is a round sum in the settlements for the younger children, and she takes it all.’ ‘That is the case of Lady Blanche Bickerstaffe,’ said Lord Fitz-Heron. ‘She will have a hundred thousand pounds.’ ‘You don’t mean that!’ said Lord Valentine; ‘and she is a very nice girl, too.’ ‘You are quite wrong about the hundred thousand, Fitz,’ said Lord Milford; ‘for I made it my business to inquire most particularly into the affair: it is only fifty.’ ‘In these cases, the best rule is only to believe half,’ said Mr. Ormsby. ‘Then you have only got twenty thousand a-year, Ormsby,’ said Lord Milford, laughing, ‘because the world gives you forty.’ ‘Well, we must do the best we can in these hard times,’ said Mr. Ormsby, with an air of mock resignation. ‘With your Dukes of Bellamont and all these grandees on the stage, we little men shall be scarcely able to hold up our heads.’