“Mr. Harding means nothing of that kind, I 'll be sworn,” broke in Jack. “He means an easy-tempered fellow, amusing and amusable. Well, Nelly, if it's not English, I can't help it--it ought to be; but when one wants ammunition, one takes the first heavy thing at hand. Egad! I'd ram down a minister plenipotentiary, rather than fire blank-cartridge.” “Is Lord Culduff also jolly, Mr. Harding?” asked Eleanor, now looking up with a sparkle in her eye. “I scarcely know--I have the least possible acquaintance with his Lordship; I doubt, indeed, if he will recollect me,” said Harding, with diffidence. “What are we to do with this heavy swell when he comes, is the puzzle to me,” said Augustus, gravely. “How is he to be entertained,--how amused? Here's a county with nothing to see--nothing to interest--without a neighborhood. What _are_ we to do with him?” “The more one is a man of the world, in the best sense of that phrase, the more easily he finds how to shape his life to any and every circumstance,” said Temple, with a sententious tone and manner. “Which means, I suppose, that he'll make the best of a bad case, and bear our tiresomeness with bland urbanity?” said Jack. “Let us only hope, for all our sakes, that his trial may not be a long one.” “Just to think of such a country!” exclaimed Marion; “there is absolutely no one we could have to meet him.” “What's the name of that half-pay captain who called here t'other morning?--the fellow who sat from luncheon till nigh dusk?” asked Jack. “Captain Craufurd,” replied Marion. “I hope nobody thinks of inviting _him_; he is insufferably vulgar, and presuming besides.” “Was n't that the man, Marion, who told you that as my father and Lady Augusta didn't live together the county gentry could n't be expected to call on us?” asked Augustus, laughing. “He did more: he entered into an explanation of the peculiar tenets of the neighborhood, and told me if we had had the good luck to have settled in the south or west of Ireland, they'd not have minded it, 'but here,' he added, 'we are great sticklers for morality.'” “And what reply did you make him, Marion?” asked Jack. “I was so choked with passion that I could n't speak, or if I did say anything I have forgotten it. At all events, he set me off laughing immediately after, as he said,--'As for myself, I don't care a rush. I'm a bachelor, and a bachelor can go anywhere.'” She gave these words with such a close mimicry of his voice and manner, that a general burst of laughter followed them. “There's the very fellow we want,” cried Jack. “That's the man to meet our distinguished guest; he 'll not let him escape without a wholesome hint or two.” “I 'd as soon see a gentleman exposed to the assault of a mastiff as to the insulting coarseness of such a fellow as that,” said Temple, passionately.