rs and offer them any politeness
which is in our power. At present they must feel lonely and friendless.
What says the great Firdousi? 'The choicest ornaments to a man's house
are his friends.'"

My sister and I knew by experience that when the old man began to
justify his resolution by quotations from the Persian poets there was no
chance of shaking it. Sure enough that afternoon saw the phaeton at the
door, with my father perched upon the seat, with his second-best coat on
and a pair of new driving-gloves.

"Jump in, my dears," he cried, cracking his whip briskly, "we shall show
the general that he has no cause to be ashamed of his neighbours."

Alas! pride always goes before a fall. Our well-fed ponies and shining
harness were not destined that day to impress the tenants of Cloomber
with a sense of our importance.

We had reached the avenue gate, and I was about to get out and open it,
when our attention was arrested by a very large wooden placard, which
was attached to one of the trees in such a manner that no one could
possibly pass without seeing it. On the white surface of this board was
printed in big, black letters the following hospitable inscription:

GENERAL AND MRS. HEATHERSTONE
HAVE NO WISH
TO INCREASE
THE CIRCLE OF THEIR ACQUAINTANCE.

We all sat gazing at this announcement for some moments in silent
astonishment. Then Esther and I, tickled by the absurdity of the thing,
burst out laughing, but my father pulled the ponies' heads round, and
drove home with compressed lips and the cloud of much wrath upon his
brow. I have never seen the good man so thoroughly moved, and I am
convinced that his anger did not arise from any petty feeling of injured
vanity upon his own part, but from the thought that a slight had been
offered to the Laird of Branksome, whose dignity he represented.

CHAPTER IV. OF A YOUNG MAN WITH A GREY HEAD

If I had any personal soreness on account of this family snub, it was a
very passing emotion, and one which was soon effaced from my mind.

It chanced that on the very next day after the episode I had occasion
to pass that way, and stopped to have another look at the obnoxious
placard. I was standing staring at it and wondering what could have
induced our neighbours to take such an outrageous step, when I became
suddenly aware of a sweet, girlish face which peeped out at me