had omitted to keep
with that dull accuracy which custom has rendered necessary. Mrs.
Taunton complains that she has been much deceived in him. He introduced
himself to the family on board a Gravesend steam-packet, and certainly,
therefore, ought to have proved respectable.

Mr. Percy Noakes is as light-hearted and careless as ever.

CHAPTER VIII--THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL

The little town of Great Winglebury is exactly forty-two miles and
three-quarters from Hyde Park corner. It has a long, straggling, quiet
High-street, with a great black and white clock at a small red Town-hall,
half-way up--a market-place--a cage--an assembly-room--a church--a
bridge--a chapel--a theatre--a library--an inn--a pump--and a
Post-office. Tradition tells of a 'Little Winglebury,' down some
cross-road about two miles off; and, as a square mass of dirty paper,
supposed to have been originally intended for a letter, with certain
tremulous characters inscribed thereon, in which a lively imagination
might trace a remote resemblance to the word 'Little,' was once stuck up
to be owned in the sunny window of the Great Winglebury Post-office, from
which it only disappeared when it fell to pieces with dust and extreme
old age, there would appear to be some foundation for the legend. Common
belief is inclined to bestow the name upon a little hole at the end of a
muddy lane about a couple of miles long, colonised by one wheelwright,
four paupers, and a beer-shop; but, even this authority, slight as it is,
must be regarded with extreme suspicion, inasmuch as the inhabitants of
the hole aforesaid, concur in opining that it never had any name at all,
from the earliest ages down to the present day.

The Winglebury Arms, in the centre of the High-street, opposite the small
building with the big clock, is the principal inn of Great
Winglebury--the commercial-inn, posting-house, and excise-office; the
'Blue' house at every election, and the judges' house at every assizes.
It is the head-quarters of the Gentlemen's Whist Club of Winglebury Blues
(so called in opposition to the Gentlemen's Whist Club of Winglebury
Buffs, held at the other house, a little further down): and whenever a
juggler, or wax-work man, or concert-giver, takes Great Winglebury in his
circuit, it is immediately placarded all over the town that Mr.
So-and-so, 'trusting to that liberal support which the inhabitants of
Great Winglebury have long been so liberal in bestowing,