er in it. The old man
is full of attention and politeness, both to his guests and to their
guests; but he is half worried with the children, and t'other half
worried with so many fine folks; and muddled with drinking things that
he is not used to, and with late hours. Wagstaff has fled--as he always
does on such occasions--to a farm-house on the verge of the estate. The
hall, and the parsonage, and even the gardener's house, are all full of
beds for guests, and servants, and grooms. Presently, the old gentleman,
in his morning rides, sees some of the young bucks shooting the
pheasants in his home-park, where he never allows them to be disturbed,
and comes home in a fume, to hear that the house is turned upside-down
by the host of scarlet-breeched and powdered livery-servants, and that
they have turned all the maids' heads with sweethearting. But, at
length, the day of departure arrives, and all sweep away as suddenly and
rapidly as they came; and the old squire sends off for Wagstaff, and
blesses his stars that what he calls "the annual hurricane," is over.

But what a change will there be when the old squire is dead! Already
have Tom and Lady Barbara walked over the ground, and planned it. That
horrid fright of an old house, as they call it, will be swept as clean
away as if it had not stood there five hundred years. A grand
Elizabethean pile is already decreed to succeed it. The fashionable
architect will come driving down in his smart Brougham, with all his
plans and papers. A host of mechanics will come speedily after him, by
coach or by wagon: booths will be seen rising all around the old place,
which will vanish away, and its superb successor rise where it stood,
like a magical vision. Already are ponderous cases lying loaded, in
London, with massive mantle-pieces of the finest Italian marble, marble
busts, and heads of old Greek and Roman heroes, genuine burial-urns from
Herculaneum and Pompeii, and vessels of terra-cotta,
gloriously-sculptured vases, and even columns of verde antique--all from
classic Italy--to adorn the walls of this same noble new house.

But, meantime, spite of the large income of Tom and Lady Barbara, the
old squire has strange suspicions of mortgages, and dealings with Jews.
He has actually inklings of horrid post-obits; and groans as he looks on
his old oaks, as he rides through his woods and parks, foreseeing their
overthrow; nay, he fancies he sees the land-agent among his quiet old
far