that the Freelys were a much higher family than his own.  It had been foolish modesty in him hitherto to conceal the fact that a branch of the Freelys held a manor in Yorkshire, and to shut up the portrait of his great uncle the admiral, instead of hanging it up where a family portrait should be hung—­over the mantelpiece in the parlour.  Admiral Freely, K.C.B., once placed in this conspicuous position, was seen to have had one arm only, and one eye—­in these points resembling the heroic Nelson—­while a certain pallid insignificance of feature confirmed the relationship between himself and his grand-nephew.

Next, Mr. Freely was seized with an irrepressible ambition to posses Mrs. Palfrey’s receipt for brawn, hers being pronounced on all hands to be superior to his own—­as he informed her in a very flattering letter carried by his errand-boy.  Now Mrs. Palfrey, like other geniuses, wrought by instinct rather than by rule, and possessed no receipts—­indeed, despised all people who used them, observing that people who pickled by book, must pickle by weights and measures, and such nonsense; as for herself, her weights and measures were the tip of her finger and the tip of her tongue, and if you went nearer, why, of course, for dry goods like flour and spice, you went by handfuls and pinches, and for wet, there was a middle-sized jug—­quite the best thing whether for much or little, because you might know how much a teacupful was if you’d got any use of your senses, and you might be sure it would take five middle-sized jugs to make a gallon.  Knowledge of this kind is like Titian’s colouring, difficult to communicate; and as Mrs. Palfrey, once remarkably handsome, had now become rather stout and asthmatical, and scarcely ever left home, her oral teaching could hardly be given anywhere except at Long Meadows.  Even a matron is not insusceptible to flattery, and the prospect of a visitor whose great object would be to listen to her conversation, was not without its charms to Mrs. Palfrey.  Since there was no receipt to be sent in reply to Mr. Freely’s humble request, she called on her more docile daughter, Penny, to write a note, telling him that her mother would be glad to see him and talk with him on brawn, any day that he could call at Long Meadows.  Penny obeyed with a trembling hand, thinking how wonderfully things came about in this world.

In this way, Mr. Freely got himself introduced into the home of the Palfreys, and notwithstanding a tendency in the male part of the family to jeer at him a little as “peaky” and bow-legged, he presently established his position as an accepted and frequent guest.  Young Towers looked at him with increasing disgust when they met at the house on a Sunday, and secretly longed to try his ferret upon him, as a piece of vermin which that valuable animal would be likely to tackle with unhesitating vigour.  But—­so blind sometimes are parents—­neither Mr. nor Mrs. Palfrey suspected that Penny would have anything