"Have you? Perhaps you were his nurse's husband, or the butler. If you come to the servants' hall"——
"Indeed! What to do? To see fine ladies' maids give themselves airs, and disgust people with their insolence and affectation. Much obliged to you all the same; but when I wants to see sights like that, I'll come into the drawing-room."
"I don't know what you mean, and beg you'll retire. Papa put an Irish beggar into prison for three weeks for insulting my aunt."
"What! old Susie—old Two-to-the-Pound, and all that. He must have been very much of an Irishman to insult the old Roman."
"What do you mean, sir? Do you know my aunt Susannah?"
"Ay, to be sure. Ain't I one of her elders? Lord love ye, I've known old Susie since she was just up to my knee—and a reg'lar speciment she was. We always called her Two-to-the-Pound. Many's the laugh her father and I has had about her dumpiness, and all that."
"Papa's grandfather? Did you know him, sir?" enquired Miss Arabel, examining her companion at the same time to see if he was not the Wandering-Jew or St Leon; for she considered her papa's grandfather as the principal personage of a very remote historical era; and would have been little more surprised to hear that the old gentleman before her had smoked cigars with Sir Walter Raleigh. "Did you know my great-grandfather, sir?"
"Didn't I? There wasn't a bigger snob, though I says it, in all England; and just about two-and-forty years ago, him and me was as thick as two thieves, though only one of us was a thief. He was a old man then, and I was a young 'un, and all that. Your father was summut about eight years old, and my daughter was born the very month afore he bought this here estate. So you see it ain't no great time to talk about, seeing my daughter aint a old 'oman yet, though she has a girl twenty year old."
"I don't understand what you say," repeated Miss Arabel.
"Old Susie will understand me better, and so will little Gus."