rt of which he
purchased the Shropshire estate, which he entailed, and to which I am
therefore heir-apparent.

Sir Geoffrey had, in addition to my grandfather, three sons and a
daughter, the latter being born twenty years after her youngest brother.
These sons were: Geoffrey, who died without issue, having been killed in
the Indian Mutiny at Meerut in 1857, at which he took up a sword, though
a civilian, to fight for his life; Roger (to whom I shall refer
presently); and John--the latter, like Geoffrey, dying unmarried. Out of
Sir Geoffrey's family of five, therefore, only three have to be
considered: My grandfather, who had three children, two of whom, a son
and a daughter, died young, leaving only my father, Roger and Patience.
Patience, who was born in 1858, married an Irishman of the name of
Sellenger--which was the usual way of pronouncing the name of St. Leger,
or, as they spelled it, Sent Leger--restored by later generations to the
still older form. He was a reckless, dare-devil sort of fellow, then a
Captain in the Lancers, a man not without the quality of bravery--he won
the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Amoaful in the Ashantee Campaign.
But I fear he lacked the seriousness and steadfast strenuous purpose
which my father always says marks the character of our own family. He
ran through nearly all of his patrimony--never a very large one; and had
it not been for my grand-aunt's little fortune, his days, had he lived,
must have ended in comparative poverty. Comparative, not actual; for the
Meltons, who are persons of considerable pride, would not have tolerated
a poverty-stricken branch of the family. We don't think much of that
lot--any of us.

Fortunately, my great-aunt Patience had only one child, and the premature
decease of Captain St. Leger (as I prefer to call the name) did not allow
of the possibility of her having more. She did not marry again, though
my grandmother tried several times to arrange an alliance for her. She
was, I am told, always a stiff, uppish person, who would not yield
herself to the wisdom of her superiors. Her own child was a son, who
seemed to take his character rather from his father's family than from my
own. He was a wastrel and a rolling stone, always in scrapes at school,
and always wanting to do ridiculous things. My father, as Head of the
House and his own senior by eighteen years, tried often to admonish him;
but his perversity of spirit and his truculence were s