Peterborough chuckled over this ‘Oh!’ and the stoppage of further questions, while acknowledging that the luxury of a pipe would help to make him more charitable.  He enjoyed the Port of his native land, but he did, likewise, feel the want of one whiff or so of the less restrictive foreigner’s pipe; and he begged me to note the curiosity of our worship of aristocracy and royalty; and we, who were such slaves to rank, and such tyrants in our own households,—­we Britons were the great sticklers for freedom!  His conclusion was, that we were not logical.  We would have a Throne, which we would not allow the liberty to do anything to make it worthy of rational veneration:  we would have a peerage, of which we were so jealous that it formed almost an assembly of automatons; we would have virtuous women, only for them to be pursued by immoral men.  Peterborough feared, he must say, that we were an inconsequent people.  His residence abroad had so far unhinged him; but a pipe would have stopped his complainings.

Moved, perhaps, by generous wine, in concert with his longing for tobacco, he dropped an observation of unwonted shrewdness; he said:  ’The squire, my dear Harry, a most honourable and straightforward country gentleman, and one of our very wealthiest, is still, I would venture to suggest, an example of old blood that requires—­I study race—­varying, modifying, one might venture to say, correcting; and really, a friend with more privileges than I possess, would or should throw him a hint that no harm has been done to the family by an intermixture . . . old blood does occasionally need it—­you know I study blood—­it becomes too coarse, or, in some cases, too fine.  The study of the mixture of blood is probably one of our great physical problems.’

Peterborough commended me to gratitude for the imaginative and chivalrous element bestowed on me by a father that was other than a country squire; one who could be tolerant of innocent habits, and not of guilty ones—­a further glance at the interdicted pipe.  I left him almost whimpering for it.

The contemplation of the curious littleness of the lives of men and women lived in this England of ours, made me feel as if I looked at them out of a palace balcony-window; for no one appeared to hope very much or to fear; people trotted in their different kinds of harness; and I was amused to think of my heart going regularly in imitation of those about me.  I was in a princely state of mind indeed, not disinclined for a time to follow the general course of life, while despising it.  An existence without colour, without anxious throbbing, without salient matter for thought, challenged contempt.  But it was exceedingly funny.  My aunt Dorothy, the squire, and Janet submitted to my transparent inward laughter at them, patiently waiting for me to share their contentment, in the deluded belief that the hour would come.  The principal items of news embraced the death of Squire Gregory