Conversation,’ and there, upon my honour, the second sentence I read was ‘Lady Smart,’ (mark that—­’LADY!’) ’What, you are sick of the mulligrubs, with eating chopt hay?’ So my good old yellow letter-writer (’I.’ or ‘T.’  Tresham, I can’t decide what he signs himself)—­you were, no doubt, exact here as in other matters, and I was determining the probable and the impossible, unphilosophically, by the rule of my own time.  And my poor Magnolia, though you spoke some years—­thirty or so—­later than my Lady Smart, a countess for aught I know, you are not so much to blame.  Thirty years! what of that?  Don’t we, to this hour, more especially in rural districts, encounter among the old folk, every now and then, one of honest Simon Wagstaff’s pleasantries, which had served merry ladies and gentlemen so long before that charming compiler, with his ‘Large Table Book,’ took the matter in hands.  And I feel, I confess, a queer sort of a thrill, not at all contemptuous—­neither altogether sad, nor altogether joyous—­but something pleasantly regretful, whenever one of those quaint and faded old servants of the mirth of so many dead and buried generations, turns up in my company.

And now the sun went down behind the tufted trees, and the blue shades of evening began to deepen, and the merry company flocked into the King’s House, to dance again and drink tea, and make more love, and play round games, and joke, and sing songs, and eat supper under old Colonel Stafford’s snug and kindly roof-tree.

Dangerfield, who arrived rather late, was now in high chat with Aunt Becky.  She rather liked him and had very graciously accepted a gray parrot and a monkey, which he had deferentially presented, a step which called forth, to General Chattesworth’s consternation, a cockatoo from Cluffe, who felt the necessity of maintaining his ground against the stranger, and wrote off by the next packet to London, in a confounded passion, for he hated wasting money, about a pelican he had got wind of.  Dangerfield also entered with much apparent interest into a favourite scheme of Aunt Becky’s, for establishing, between Chapelizod and Knockmaroon, a sort of retreat for discharged gaol-birds of her selection, a colony, happily for the character and the silver spoons of the neighbourhood, never eventually established.

It was plain he was playing the frank, good fellow, and aiming at popularity.  He had become one of the club.  He played at whist, and only smiled, after his sort, when his partner revoked, and he lost like a gentleman.  His talk was brisk, and hard, and caustic—­that of a Philistine who had seen the world and knew it.  He had the Peerage by rote, and knew something out-of-the-way, amusing or damnable about every person of note you could name; and his shrewd gossip had a bouquet its own, and a fine cynical flavour, which secretly awed and delighted the young fellows.  He smiled a good deal.  He was not aware that a smile did not quite become