ife and a
daughter of sixteen. On alighting from a carriage, they first of all
directed their steps towards the statue, conversing together with
pleasant animation. The father (Martin Warricombe, Esq. of Thornhaw, a
small estate some five miles from Kingsmill,) had a countenance
suggestive of engaging qualities--genial humour, mildness, a turn for
meditation, perhaps for study. His attire was informal, as if he
disliked abandoning the freedom of the country even when summoned to
urban ceremonies. He wore a grey felt hat, and a light jacket which
displayed the straightness of his shoulders. Mrs. Warricombe and her
daughter were more fashionably equipped, with taste which proclaimed
their social standing. Save her fresh yet delicate complexion the lady
had no particular personal charm. Of the young girl it could only be
said that she exhibited a graceful immaturity, with perchance a little
more earnestness than is common at her age; her voice, even when she
spoke gaily, was seldom audible save by the person addressed.

Coming to a pause before Sir Job, Mr. Warricombe put on a pair of
eyeglasses which had dangled against his waistcoat, and began to
scrutinise carefully the sculptured lineaments. He was addressing
certain critical remarks to his companions when an interruption
appeared in the form of a young man whose first words announced his
relation to the group.

'I say, you're very late! There'll be no getting a decent seat, if you
don't mind. Leave Sir Job till afterwards.'

'The statue somehow disappoints me,' observed his father, placidly.

'Oh, it isn't bad, I think,' returned the youth, in a voice not unlike
his father's, save for a note of excessive self-confidence. He looked
about eighteen; his comely countenance, with its air of robust health
and habitual exhilaration, told of a boyhood passed amid free and
joyous circumstances. It was the face of a young English plutocrat,
with more of intellect than such visages are wont to betray; the native
vigour of his temperament had probably assimilated something of the
modern spirit. 'I'm glad,' he continued, 'that they haven't stuck him
in a toga, or any humbug of that sort. The old fellow looks baggy, but
so he was. They ought to have kept his chimney-pot, though. Better than
giving him those scraps of hair, when everyone knows he was as bald as
a beetle.'

'Sir Job should have been granted Caesar's privilege,' said Mr.
Warricombe, with a pleasant twinkle in hi