“What a pretty snuff-box!” he remarked, as I handed him mine, which I am still old-fashioned enough to carry.  It is a pretty old gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as a child, when she was very kind to me.  “Yes; a pretty box.  I can remember when many ladies—­ most ladies, carried a box—­nay, two boxes—­tabatiere and bonbonniere.  What lady carries snuff-box now, hey?  Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise?  I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!—­ ah! that was a time, that was a time!  Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind’s eye!  At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza?  Aha, did I not love thee?  Did I not walk with thee then?  Do I not see thee still?”

This was passing strange.  My ancestress—­but there is no need to publish her revered name—­did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary’s, where she lies buried.  She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane.  She used to wear little black velvet shoes, with the prettiest high heels in the world.

“Did you—­did you—­know, then, my great-gr-nd-m-ther?” I said.

He pulled up his coat sleeve—­“Is that her name?” he said.

“Eliza—­”

There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature written in red on his arm.

“You knew her old,” he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange knack); “I knew her young and lovely.  I danced with her at the Bury ball.  Did I not, dear, dear Miss ——?”

As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny’s maiden name.  Her maiden name was ——.  Her honored married name was ——.

“She married your great-gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket Plate,” Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.

Merciful powers!  I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon case on the sideboard in my gr-nny’s parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very horse.  My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantelpiece, and Poseidon won the Newmarket Cup in the year 1783!

“Yes; you are right.  I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night, before I lost my poor leg.  And I quarreled with your grandf—­, ha!”

As he said “Ha!” there came three quiet little taps on the table—­ it is the middle table in the “Gray’s-Inn CoffeeHouse,” under the bust of the late Duke of W-ll-ngt-n.

“I fired in the air,” he continued; “did I not?” (Tap, tap, tap.) “Your grandfather hit me in the leg.  He married three months afterwards.  ‘Captain Brown,’ I said ’who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her?’ She is there!  She is there!” (Tap, tap, tap.) “Yes, my first love—­”

But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means “No.”