MR. JOHNSTONE’S INFIRMITY.
“Felix Johnstone! What a name, mamma! There is a great want of tone about it. Don’t you think so? I’m sure I hope the man is presentable, but you know how careless and unobservant Dick is.”
The speaker, Maud Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, a lovely girl of some twenty summers, sat, pen in hand, and with her pretty brows all a-pucker, in her mamma’s boudoir, scanning the list of names of intended guests of Ormsby Hall during the ensuing shooting season.
“My dear,” replied her stately and abundant mamma in a tone which settled the matter, “he is as rich as Crœsus, and even if he should prove eccentric, why he is an Australian, and you know everything is excused in a ‘Colonial;’ especially,” resumed the dame after a brief pause and with more than her usual drawl—“especially if he is very wealthy.”
Maud was too young for an argument of this kind to have any weight with her, but she only shrugged her well-poised shoulders by way of protest, and presently the letter of invitation for the Twelfth of August, when grouse shooting commenced, was on its way to Mr. Felix Johnstone.
The person whose name set the dainty Maud’s teeth on edge was a stoutly-built, well-preserved gentleman of some forty years, the greater part of whose life had been spent at the Antipodes, where, if he had not acquired much of the polish demanded by polite society, he had, nevertheless, secured a goodly supply of that excellent substitute for it—gold.
When Mr. Felix Johnstone reached the Hall, in response to the invitation, he found that the bulk of the other visitors had already arrived, and to a great extent “sorted” themselves, as he termed it; that is to say, that the males and females had, for the most part, settled upon their friendships for the period of their stay at Ormsby Hall.
This arrangement left the late arrival somewhat out in the cold. It is true that his friend Dick did his best to make him feel at home, but, as the old Squire, Colonel Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, was somewhat gouty, most of his duties as host devolved upon his son, who had in consequence but little time to devote to any particular guest.
“Jarvis,” said Mr. Johnstone to his valet the morning after his arrival, “you’ll have to keep me posted in things. You know that’s what you’re here for. Captain Fitzwaring recommended you as being the best man he knew, and Dick—I mean the Captain—knows a good man, if anybody does.”