h confounded name."

A low, quiet laugh was now heard from the end of the table, and the
company remembered, apparently for the first time, that Mr. Harding, the
agent, was there, and very busily engaged with a broiled chicken.

"Ain't I right, Mr. Harding?" cried Jack, as he heard the low chuckle of
the small, meek, submissive-looking little man, at the other end of the
table.

"Ain't I right?"

"I have met with very good French versions of English cookery abroad,
Captain Bramleigh."

"Don't call me 'captain' or I 'll suspect your accuracy about the
cookery," interrupted Jack. "I fear I 'm about as far off that rank as
Bertond is from the sea-pie."

"Do you know Cutbill, Harding?" said Augustus, addressing the agent in
the tone of an heir expectant.

"Yes. We were both examined in the same case before a committee of the
House, and I made his acquaintance then."

"What sort of person is he?" asked Temple.

"Is he jolly, Mr. Harding?--that's the question," cried Jack. "I
suspect we shall be overborne by greatness, and a jolly fellow would be
a boon from heaven."

"I believe he is what might be called jolly," said Harding, cautiously.

"Jolly sounds like a familiar word for vulgar," said Marion. "I hope Mr.
Harding does not mean that."

"Mr. Harding means nothing of that kind, I 'll be sworn," broke in
Jack. "He means an easy-tempered fellow, amusing and amusable. Well,
Nelly, if it's not English, I can't help it--it ought to be; but when
one wants ammunition, one takes the first heavy thing at hand. Egad! I'd
ram down a minister plenipotentiary, rather than fire blank-cartridge."

"Is Lord Culduff also jolly, Mr. Harding?" asked Eleanor, now looking up
with a sparkle in her eye.

"I scarcely know--I have the least possible acquaintance with his
Lordship; I doubt, indeed, if he will recollect me," said Harding, with
diffidence.

"What are we to do with this heavy swell when he comes, is the puzzle
to me," said Augustus, gravely. "How is he to be entertained,--how
amused? Here's a county with nothing to see--nothing to
interest--without a neighborhood. What _are_ we to do with him?"

"The more one is a man of the world, in the best sense of that
phrase, the more easily he finds how to shape his life to any and every
circumstance," said Temple, with a sententious tone and manner.

"Which means, I suppose, that he'll make the best of a bad case, and
bear our tiresomeness with bland urbanity?" said Jack.