“I hope you don’t mean to make my little sister into Aunt Margaret,” said Sir Ludovic. “Perhaps, my dear, you had better go and tell Jean of Mr. Bellingham’s arrival. I don’t know what you will think,” he added, escaping with some relief, as Margaret hurried away, into the more habitual current of his thoughts, “of my tumble-down old house.” “It is a most curious old house,” said the stranger; “I can see that already. I have been studying it all the time; fifteenth century, do you suppose? Domestic architecture is always a little bewildering. I know there are people who can read it like a church, but I don’t pretend to be clever about it. It always puzzles me.” “No doubt it is puzzling, when you know only a little about it,” said Ludovic, who knew nothing at all. “That is just my case,” said the other, cheerfully. “I have been taught just a little of most things. It is very unsatisfactory. Indeed, to have the reputation of a handy man in a large family party is ruin to everything. You can neither work nor study: and when you are cursed, in addition, with a little good-nature--” “A large share of that,” Sir Ludovic said, chiefly because it seemed to him the only thing to say; and it was very good-natured, indeed, for a young man, a man so entirely _comme il faut_, and looking more like Pall Mall than Earl’s-hall, to come when his aunt called him so readily. Ludovic knew he himself would not have done it for any number of old ladies, but then he had always had his profession to think of; and how many things he had at this moment to think of! Thank Heaven, at least he had got rid of Margaret’s affairs for the moment. Let Mary put her own brains to work and see what she could make of it. For himself, there was a certain relief in the sight of a new face. In the mean time, while Sir Ludovic’s mind was thus condoling with itself, the new arrival had paid his cab, and seen his portmanteau handed over to John, who had made his appearance at the sound of the wheels. “For some things, sir,” said young Bellingham, peering at John through his eyeglass, “this is a delightful country. Fancy your old butler, who looks an archbishop at least, meekly carrying off my portmanteau! If he had been on the other side of the Tweed, he would have looked at it helplessly, and requested to know what he was supposed to have to do with such an article.” “John is not used to much grandeur,” said Sir Ludovic, not knowing whether this was compliment or depreciation; “a man-of-all-work about a homely Scotch country-house is not like one of your pampered menials in the South. Did you have a good crossing at the Ferry?”