men-servants were the sounds which greeted the lieutenant when he arrived at the house. Even before entering, he had formed, both from this circumstance and from the extent of the stables, some idea of the sort of rollicking,[26] happy-go-lucky, rough country household he was to expect; and he had scarcely set foot inside the wide and lofty hall when the onrush of half a dozen barking dogs, the crowding into the hall of three or four gawky men-servants, and the entrance of the squire himself, in a scarlet coat, with a loud and hearty greeting on his lips, fully confirmed this impression.

[26]

“Welcome, welcome to Hurst Court, lieutenant!” cried his host, seizing him by the hand with a grip like a blacksmith’s, and promptly leading him in the direction of the music-room, across a floor where a couple of stag-hounds were lying lazily stretched out, and between walls laden with antlers and the grinning pates of three or four score foxes. “You should have come a couple of hours sooner; for the ladies have a mind to show you their Dutch garden, and to regale you with some music before we dine. I know not, sir, whether such diversions are to your taste, or whether your liking runs more in the direction of fox-hunting and the shooting of game, as mine does? I have no taste, myself, for your finicking London modes; but I’m told that the young bucks nowadays pride themselves[27] more on cutting a fine figure in the ladies’ drawing-rooms than in sitting a horse well and riding straight to hounds.”

[27]

“Nay, squire, it will give me vast pleasure to hear the ladies’ music,” said Lieutenant Tregenna, when his host’s volubility allowed him the chance of answering. “’Tis a diversion one can enjoy but seldom so far from town.”

“Nay, we have better diversions here than those,” said the squire disparagingly. “But my wife and daughters will be prodigious pleased that you are not of my way of thinking. For a stranger in these parts is a mighty welcome arrival, I assure you, and like to be made much of.”

Indeed, it was quite perceptible to the lieutenant that there was a flutter of excitement going on in the music-room up to the very moment of his entrance; and the welcome he got from the squire’s wife and two daughters was quite as sincere, though not so tempestuous, as that of the host himself.

For Mrs. Waldron and the two young misses, her daughters, were quite as much in love with the pleasures of the town as the husband and[28] 

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