“She is not well, ma’am,” says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell’s audience-chamber.

“My Lady not well!  What’s the matter?”

“Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma’am, since she was last here—­ I don’t mean with the family, ma’am, but when she was here as a bird of passage like.  My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept her room a good deal.”

“Chesney Wold, Thomas,” rejoins the housekeeper with proud complacency, “will set my Lady up!  There is no finer air and no healthier soil in the world!”

Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and retires to the servants’ hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.

This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark.  Next evening, down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass.  Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the country on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless disposition and never do anything anywhere.

On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful.  A better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at dinner, there could not possibly be.  Better got up gentlemen than the other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard to find.  Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent; and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her French conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock in to dinner, or even the privilege of her hand in the dance.  On these national occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and unpensioning country.

My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day.  But at all the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief.  As to Sir Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.

Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf, away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester holds forth after dinner.  Daily the restless men who have no occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy.  Daily Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.