Music and talking sounded on all sides, but they made no impression on the chess-players.  Lady Mary performed all her most brilliant airs and variations in vain, as far as Mr Gwynne was concerned; and Rowland was even unconscious that Netta had resolutely played through all the small pieces she had learnt at school at the particular request of Sir Hugh Pryse.

‘That game will never finish,’ at last exclaimed Lady Mary, approaching Mr Gwynne.  ‘How can any one like chess?’

Mr Gwynne kept his finger on a piece he was about to move, glanced up, but did not speak.

’They tell me you ought to have at least five or six moves in your eye whilst you are making one,’ said Sir Hugh.  ’For my part, I always find one move at a time more than I can manage.  It certainly is the dullest game ever invented.’

‘Chess is a game of great antiquity,’ said the Rev. Jonathan sententiously.  ’It is supposed to have been invented in China or Hindustan, and was known in the latter place by the name Chaturanga, that is, four angas, or members of an army.’

‘The army must be proud to send such members to parliament,’ said young Rice Rice, with a consciousness of superior wit, in which the remainder of the party did not appear to participate.

‘True, young gentleman,’ said Mr Jonathan, ’and well she might, for they were elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers; but what such members of an army have to do with parliament, I should be glad to hear you explain.  I do not remember mention being made of parliament till the twelfth century.  It was first applied to general assemblies in France during the reign of Louis the Seventh; and the earliest mention of it in England is in the preamble to the statute of Westminster in 1272.  It is derived from the French word parler, to speak.’

‘Then,’ said Miss Gwynne, ’there must be some truth in what I have heard, that the first parliament was composed of women.’

’Good, good, ‘pon my soul!’ roared Sir Hugh.

‘But Sir William Jones says of chess,’ continued Mr Jonathan, in the same unchanged tone and manner, ‘that the Hindus—­’

’Oh, my dear, pray do not let us hear anything of Sir William Jones; I am sick to death of all the Jones’,’ interrupted Mrs Prothero, causing a diversion, and a suppressed laugh at her expense, instead of at young Rice Rice’s, who had made the last sally upon Mr Jonathan, and a somewhat mortifying retreat.

It was remarkable, that whoever made a sly attack upon that worthy, with a view to a joke, was sure to have the tables turned upon him, by the matter-of-fact way in which his joke was received, refuted, and cut to pieces.

‘I assure you, my dear, there have been many very celebrated Jones’, Sir William at the head of them.  He was a great Oriental scholar.  Then there was Inigo Jones, the architect; and John Paul Jones, the admiral; and Dr John Jones, the grammarian, born in this very county; and—­and—­’