"Does the Rev. Mr. Marrable live alone?" asked Gilmore. "Well, yes; for the most part quite alone. But just at present he had a visitor." Then the waiter told all that he knew about the Captain. The most material part of this was that the Captain had returned from London that very evening;--had come in by the Express while the two "gents" were at dinner, and had been taken to the Lowtown parsonage by the Bull 'bus. "Quite the gentleman," was the Captain, according to the waiter, and one of the "handsomest gents as ever he'd set his eyes upon." "D---- him," said poor Harry Gilmore to himself. Then he ventured upon another question. Did the waiter know anything of Captain Marrable's father? The waiter only knew that the Captain's father was "a military gent, and was high up in the army." From all which the only information which Gilmore received was the fact that the match between Marrable and Mary Lowther had not as yet become the talk of the town. After dinner Mr. Cockey proposed a glass of toddy and a cigar, remarking that he would move a bill for dispensing with the smoking rule for that night only, and to this also Gilmore assented. Now that he was at Loring he did not know what to do with himself better than drinking toddy with Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey declared the bill to be carried nem. con., and the cigars and toddy were produced. Mr. Cockey remarked that he had heard of Sir Gregory Marrable, of Dunripple Park. He travelled in Warwickshire, and was in the habit, as he said, of fishing up little facts. Sir Gregory wasn't much of a man, according to his account. The estate was small and, as Mr. Cockey fancied, a little out at elbows. Mr. Cockey thought it all very well to be a country gentleman and a "barrow knight," as he called it, as long as you had an estate to follow; but he thought very little of a title without plenty of stuff. Commerce, according to his notions, was the back bone of the nation;--and that the corps of travelling commercial gentlemen was the back bone of trade, every child knew. Mr. Cockey became warm and friendly as he drank his toddy. "Now, I don't know what you are, sir," said he. "I'm not very much of anything," said Gilmore. "Perhaps not, sir. Let that be as it may. But a man, sir, that feels that he's one of the supports of the commercial supremacy of this nation ain't got much reason to be ashamed of himself." "Not on that account, certainly." "Nor yet on no other account, as long as he's true to his employers. Now you talk of country gentlemen." "I didn't talk of them," said Gilmore. "Well,--no,--you didn't; but they do, you know. What does a country gentleman know, and what does he do? What's the country the better of him? He 'unts, and he shoots, and he goes to bed with his skin full of wine, and then he gets up and he 'unts and he shoots again, and 'as his skin full once more. That's about all." "Sometimes he's a magistrate."