never could quite make out what kind of fishes these are," said
the Rev. John Stalworth. "They are certainly not pike which formed the
emblematic blazon of the Hotofts, and are still grim enough to frighten
future Shakspeares on the scutcheon of the Warwickshire Lucys."

"I believe they are tenches," said Mr. Mivers. "The tench is a fish that
knows how to keep itself safe by a philosophical taste for an obscure
existence in deep holes and slush."

SIR PETER.--"No, Mivers; the fishes are dace, a fish that, once
introduced into any pond, never can be got out again. You may drag
the water; you may let off the water; you may say, 'Those dace are
extirpated,'--vain thought!--the dace reappear as before; and in this
respect the arms are really emblematic of the family. All the disorders
and revolutions that have occurred in England since the Heptarchy have
left the Chillinglys the same race in the same place. Somehow or other
the Norman Conquest did not despoil them; they held fiefs under Eudo
Dapifer as peacefully as they had held them under King Harold; they took
no part in the Crusades, nor the Wars of the Roses, nor the Civil Wars
between Charles the First and the Parliament. As the dace sticks to the
water and the water sticks by the dace, so the Chillinglys stuck to the
land and the land stuck by the Chillinglys. Perhaps I am wrong to wish
that the new Chillingly may be a little less like a dace."

"Oh!" cried Miss Margaret, who, mounted on a chair, had been inspecting
the pedigree through an eye-glass, "I don't see a fine Christian name
from the beginning, except Oliver."

SIR PETER.--"That Chillingly was born in Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate,
and named Oliver in compliment to him, as his father, born in the reign
of James I., was christened James. The three fishes always swam with
the stream. Oliver!--Oliver not a bad name, but significant of radical
doctrines."

Mr. MIVERS.--"I don't think so. Oliver Cromwell made short work of
radicals and their doctrines; but perhaps we can find a name less awful
and revolutionary."

"I have it! I have it!" cried the Parson. "Here is a descent from Sir
Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley. Sir Kenelm Digby! No finer specimen of
muscular Christianity. He fought as well as he wrote; eccentric, it is
true, but always a gentleman. Call the boy Kenelm!"

"A sweet name," said Miss Sibyl: "it breathes of romance."

"Sir Kenelm Chillingly! It sounds well,--imposing!" said Miss Margar