“And you'll do well,” said he; “besides, I'm not very sure that I 'll go further than the gate-lodge;” and so saying, he took his hat, and, with the rifle on his shoulder, strolled out of the room. “Ah! he 's more like his father every day!” sighed she, as she looked after him; and if there was pride in the memory, there was some pain also. CHAPTER XXI. A COMFORTABLE COUNTRY-HOUSE If a cordial host and a graceful hostess can throw a wondrous charm over the hospitalities of a house, there is a feature in those houses where neither host nor hostess is felt which contributes largely to the enjoyment of the assembled company. I suspect, indeed, that republics work more smoothly domestically than nationally. Tilney was certainly a case in point. Mrs. Maxwell was indeed the owner,--the demesne, the stables, the horses, the gardens, the fish-ponds, were all hers; but somehow none of the persons under her roof felt themselves her guests. It was an establishment in which each lived as he liked, gave his own orders, and felt very possibly more at home, in the pleasant sense of the phrase, than in his own house. Dinner alone was a “fixture;” everything else was at the caprice of each. The old lady herself was believed to take great pride in the perfect freedom her guests enjoyed; and there was a story current of a whole family who partook of her hospitalities for three weeks, meeting her once afterwards in a watering-place, and only recognizing her as an old woman they saw at Tilney. Other tales there were of free comments of strangers made upon the household, the dinners, and such-like to herself, in ignorance of who she was, which she enjoyed vastly, and was fond of relating, in strict confidence, to her few intimates. If there were a number of pleasant features in such a household, there were occasionally little trifling drawbacks that detracted slightly from its perfect working,--mere specks in the sun, it is true, and, after all, only such defects as are inseparable from all things where humanity enters and influences. One of these--perhaps the most marked one--was the presumption of certain _habitués_ to install themselves in certain rooms, which, from long usage, they had come to regard as their own. These prescriptive rights were so well understood that the frequenters of Tilney no more thought of disturbing them than they would of contesting their neighbors' title-deeds, or appropriating to themselves some portions of their wardrobes. Occasionally, however, it did happen that some guest of more than ordinary pretension arrived,--some individual whose rank or station placed him above these conventionalities,--and in such cases some deviations from ordinary routine would occur, but so quietly and peacefully withal as never to disturb the uniform working of the domestic machinery.