"I should have liked to ask Colonel Ashley to dine with us," he said tentatively to Mrs. Gwynn. "He was leaving the house just as the meal was being served. Old Ephraim--confound the old fellow--has no sort of tact. He brought in the soup to Captain Baynell with Colonel Ashley sitting by the bedside! It was indeed a hint to beat a retreat. I was--I was mortified. I was really mortified not to ask him to stay." "Heavens, Uncle Gerald!--what are you dreaming about? Ask people to dine, and no trained servant to wait on the table--and this china--and the ladies in their pinafores!" And Mrs. Gwynn glanced scoffingly around the domestic board, for the place had once been famous for the elegance of its entertainments; but the balls, the "wine suppers," the formal late dinners of many courses, had come to an end with the conclusion of the period of prosperity, and the perfectly trained service had vanished with the vanishing butler and his corps of assistants whom he himself had rigorously drilled in the school of the pantry, in strict accordance with old traditions. "Well, we have better china," said the judge, inexorably. "And the pinafores don't grow on the ladies; we have excellent precedent for believing they can be dispensed with." Mrs. Gwynn fixed him with a resolute eye. "I don't intend to have the ladies taken from their studies in the forenoon to dress for company and distract their minds with fascinating gentlemen. Besides it is too great a compliment to receive an absolute stranger informally, as one of ourselves,--as we treat Captain Baynell,--and it is almost impossible to entertain Colonel Ashley otherwise. You forget that we have no trained servants. And I am not going to trust the handling of my aunt's beautiful old Sèvres dinner set to our inexperienced factotum--oh, the idea! It makes me shudder to think of the nicks and smashings. It ought to be kept intact for Julius's wife when he takes one, or for Clarence's if he should ever marry again. A stray Yankee officer isn't sufficient justification for risking it." "He has called so often, and has been so kind to Captain Baynell." "Well, so have I been kind to Captain Baynell, and here am I eating on the everyday china--no Sèvres for me! And I am going to be kinder still, for he is allowed to have some dessert to-day, and I have spread this tray with mine own hands."