“The habit!”

“I have not heard the call.”

“Should it not come from within?”

“And how are we to know it?”

“If it calls to you loudly!”

“Then I know it to be vanity.”

“But the wish to make a name is not vanity.”

“The wish to conceal a name may exist.”

Cornelia took one of those little sly glances at his features which print them on the brain.  The melancholy of his words threw a somber hue about him, and she began to think with mournfulness of those firm thin lips fronting misfortune:  those sunken blue eyes under its shadow.

They walked up to Mr. Pole, who was standing with Wilfrid and Emilia on the lawn; giving ear to a noise in the distance.

A big drum sounded on the confines of the Brookfield estate.  Soon it was seen entering the precincts at one of the principal gates, followed by trombone, and horn, and fife.  In the rear trooped a regiment of Sunday-garmented villagers, with a rambling tail of loose-minded boys and girls.  Blue and yellow ribands dangled from broad beaver hats, and there were rosettes of the true-blue mingled with yellow at buttonholes; and there was fun on the line of march.  Jokes plumped deep into the ribs, and were answered with intelligent vivacity in the shape of hearty thwacks, delivered wherever a surface was favourable:  a mode of repartee worthy of general adoption, inasmuch as it can be passed on, and so with certainty made to strike your neighbour as forcibly as yourself:  of which felicity of propagation verbal wit cannot always boast.  In the line of procession, the hat of a member of the corps shot sheer into the sky from the compressed energy of his brain; for he and all his comrades vociferously denied having cast it up, and no other solution was possible.  This mysterious incident may tell you that beer was thus early in the morning abroad.  In fact, it was the procession day of a provincial Club-feast or celebration of the nuptials of Beef and Beer; whereof later you shall behold the illustrious offspring.

All the Brookfield household were now upon the lawn, awaiting the attack.  Mr. Pole would have liked to impound the impouring host, drum and all, for the audacity of the trespass, and then to have fed them liberally, as a return for the compliment.  Aware that he was being treated to the honours of a great man of the neighbourhood, he determined to take it cheerfully.

“Come; no laughing!” he said, directing a glance at the maids who were ranged behind their mistresses. “’Hem! we must look pleased:  we mustn’t mind their music, if they mean well.”

Emilia, whose face was dismally screwed up at the nerve-searching discord, said:  “Why do they try to play anything but a drum?”

“In the country, in the country;” Mr. Pole emphasized.  “We put up with this kind of thing in the country.  Different in town; but we—­a—­say nothing in the country.  We must encourage respect for the gentry, in the country.  One of the penalties of a country life.  Not much harm in it.  New duties in the country.”