"So you are thinking of going into Wells to-day, Arthur?" Mrs. Falconer said when, breakfast drawing to a conclusion, she began to pile the plates together, and put all the scraps on one, for the benefit of Nip and Pip, who had been lying in the window-seat for the past half-hour in a state of suppressed excitement, with their noses on their paws, and their eyes fixed upon that end of the table where their mistress presided. The noise made by the piling up of the plates was now a decided movement, and Nip and Pip began to wriggle and leap, and finally subside on their hind legs as Joyce called out: "Trust, Nip! trust, Pip!" and then, after what she considered a due time spent in an erect position, the plate was put down before them, and its contents vanished in a twinkling. "Well, Joyce, will you be ready by eleven o'clock?" Mr. Falconer asked as he left the room. Joyce was silent, and her mother said: "Yes, yes, she shall be ready; if she is brisk she can get through all I want." Then Mrs. Falconer began to put all the silver into a wooden bowl, and rubbed it herself with the washleather when it was dried. She had just finished this part of her daily routine when the door opened and her son Melville came in. His appearance would be ridiculous in the eyes of the dandies of to-day, but in his own, at least, it was as near perfection as possible. His hair was curled in tight and very-much-oiled curls on his forehead and round his ears. He wore a high neckcloth, tied evidently with much care, supporting his retreating chin. His coat was of Lincoln green, very short in the waist, with large silver buttons, and turned back with a wide collar to display two waistcoats, the white one only showing an edge beyond the darker one of deep salmon-colour, which opened to set off a frilled shirt. The trousers were tight, and caught at the ankles by straps, and his shoes were tied with large bows. The servile imitators of "the first gentleman in Europe" followed in his steps with as much precision as possible, and Melville Falconer spared no pains to let the county folk of Somersetshire see what the real scion of _bon ton_ looked like. Melville had a pleasant, weak face; he was almost entirely forgetful of the interests or tastes of anyone but himself, and he had never given up his own wishes for the sake of another in his life. He had a ridiculous idea of his own importance, and a supreme contempt for what he called old-fashioned usage; from the vantage-ground of superior wisdom he looked down on the county gentry of Somersetshire, who, in those days, did not frequent London in the season, or tread hard on the heels of the nobility in all their customs, as is now the case.