(7) An uncle who had also been a sea-captain, and who, in rescuing a wrecked crew from an Australian reef, was himself capsized, and after a long swim finally eaten by a shark,--said shark being captured next day, and found to contain his head entire, two gold rings still in his ears, which he wore for near-sightedness, after the manner of common sailors, and one of which, after its strange vicissitudes, had found a resting-place in the secretaire of his brother, James Mesurier. Such was the only accessible "ancestry" of the Mesuriers, and it is to be feared that the last state of the family was socially worse than the first. James Mesurier was unapproachably its present summit, its Alpine peak; and he was made to suffer for it no little by humble and impecunious relatives. Still, whatever else they lacked, Henry Mesurier loved to insist that these various connections were rich in character, one or two of them inexhaustible in humour; and their rare and somewhat timorous visits to the castle of their exalted relative, James Mesurier, were occasions of much mirthful embarrassment to the young people. Here the reader is requested to excuse a brief parenthetical chapter by way of illustration, which, if he pleases, he may skip without any loss of continuity in the narrative, or the least offence in the world to the writer. This present chapter will be found continued in chapter sixteen. CHAPTER XV MERELY A HUMBLE INTERRUPTION AND ILLUSTRATION OF THE LAST Some peaceable afternoon when Mrs. Mesurier was enjoying a little doze on the parlour sofa, and her three elder daughters were snatching an hour or two from housework--they had already left school--for a little private reading, the drowsy house would suddenly be awakened by one loud wooden knock at the door. "Now, whoever can that be!" the three girls would impatiently exclaim; and presently the maid would come to Miss Esther to say that there was an old man at the door asking for Mrs. Mesurier. "What's his name, Jane?" "He wouldn't give it, miss. He said it would be all right. Mrs. Mesurier would know him well enough." "Whoever can it be? What's he like, Jane?" "He looks like a workman, miss,--very old, and rather dotey." "Who can it be? Go and ask him his name again." Esther would then arouse her mother; and the maid would come in to say that at last the old man had been persuaded to confide his name as Clegg--Samuel Clegg. "Tell the missus it's Samuel Clegg," the old man had said, with a certain amusing conceit. "She'll be glad enough to see Samuel Clegg." "Why!" said Mrs. Mesurier, "it's your father's poor old uncle, Mr. Clegg. Now, girls, you mustn't run away, but try and be nice to him. He's a simple, good, old man." Mrs. Mesurier was no more interested in Mr. Clegg than her daughters; but she had a great fund of humanity, and an inexhaustible capacity for suffering bores brilliantly.