He told every separate servant of his household, as he had told every separate clerk in his offices on one pretext or other during the morning, that he was to be the guest of honour at a big banquet together with the Marquis of Malahide--“the head of our family, sir.” Mr. Pompey Malahide had always thanked Providence for his own cunning, for his energy, and, to a certain extent, for his luck--or for that small portion of good chance that remained from all successes after the results of his own keen foresight had been deducted, which, to put it fairly, was little enough. But whilst he felt that he himself shared with Providence not a little of his own credit, there was one thing which he frankly set down generously and without reserve of smallest kind to the gods--that he had been born with a name that was in the peerage. The father of Pompey, when he had left the ancestral calling of rat-catcher on the Lincolnshire estates of the old Marquis of Malahide and had come up to London town to seek his fortune, had taken the name of the man for whom he had had the keenest admiration, whilst to his son he had given in lieu of dedication to the saints the name of the dog which had brought him most honour at the local tavern. And by consequence, the son of the rat-catcher, now grown to fortune, had always felt a kinship between himself and the living marquis, whose bluff sailor ways and jovial bearing made him the idol of the populace. Indeed, a print of the great man’s portrait was the most aggressive decoration in the house--topped by a gilt coronet and flanked, as it was, by all the prints of the great man’s ancestors that the art-dealers could find for him or foist upon him--to which central figure of importance he would always refer as “the head of our house, sir!” That night, Pompey Malahide sat at the banquet, and as he sat he received a whispered communication from a member of the Cabinet at his right hand that made his face to shine, gorgeous, boisterously glorified. And more--when the guests had risen, it made him commit the mistake which sent titters through the city and laughter through the fashionable clubs for many a day; and this he did from sheer joyousness of heart, yet, so intoxicated was he with his magnificence that city gossips were almost justified in setting it down to the full body of the wine. The guests being risen then, and grouping into tattling knots, our Pompey made his way, exultant, to the group that held the jovial figure of the sailor-marquis. “My lord,” said he--“my name is Malahide--Pompey Malahide. My family is--I--er--believe, in some remote way connected with your lordship’s.” After the silence that fell, all eyes seeking the twinkling eyes of the sailor-marquis, our Pompey received his wound.