was
beginning to feel that he was entitled to bully any mere commoner,
especially a commoner who could ask him for a seat at his board.

Mr Longestaffe was a tall, heavy man, about fifty, with hair and
whiskers carefully dyed, whose clothes were made with great care,
though they always seemed to fit him too tightly, and who thought very
much of his personal appearance. It was not that he considered himself
handsome, but that he was specially proud of his aristocratic bearing.
He entertained an idea that all who understood the matter would
perceive at a single glance that he was a gentleman of the first
water, and a man of fashion. He was intensely proud of his position in
life, thinking himself to be immensely superior to all those who
earned their bread. There were no doubt gentlemen of different
degrees, but the English gentleman of gentlemen was he who had land,
and family title-deeds, and an old family place, and family portraits,
and family embarrassments, and a family absence of any usual
employment. He was beginning even to look down upon peers, since so
many men of much less consequence than himself had been made lords;
and, having stood and been beaten three or four times for his county,
he was of opinion that a seat in the House was rather a mark of bad
breeding. He was a silly man, who had no fixed idea that it behoved
him to be of use to any one; but, yet, he had compassed a certain
nobility of feeling. There was very little that his position called
upon him to do, but there was much that it forbad him to do. It was
not allowed to him to be close in money matters. He could leave his
tradesmen's bills unpaid till the men were clamorous, but he could not
question the items in their accounts. He could be tyrannical to his
servants, but he could not make inquiry as to the consumption of his
wines in the servants' hall. He had no pity for his tenants in regard
to game, but he hesitated much as to raising their rent. He had his
theory of life and endeavoured to live up to it; but the attempt had
hardly brought satisfaction to himself or to his family.

At the present moment, it was the great desire of his heart to sell
the smaller of his two properties and disembarrass the other. The debt
had not been altogether of his own making, and the arrangement would,
he believed, serve his whole family as well as himself. It would also
serve his son, who was blessed with a third property of his own which
he had already m