At Caversham there was a very grand party,—­as grand almost as a dinner party can be in the country.  There were the Earl and Countess of Loddon and Lady Jane Pewet from Loddon Park, and the bishop and his wife, and the Hepworths.  These, with the Carburys and the parson’s family, and the people staying in the house, made twenty-four at the dinner table.  As there were fourteen ladies and only ten men, the banquet can hardly be said to have been very well arranged.  But those things cannot be done in the country with the exactness which the appliances of London make easy; and then the Longestaffes, though they were decidedly people of fashion, were not famous for their excellence in arranging such matters.  If aught, however, was lacking in exactness, it was made up in grandeur...