Liberal bleakness we had Mrs. Millingham, with her white hair and
her fresh mind and complexion, and Esmeer. Willie Crampton was with
us, but not his wife, who was having her third baby on principle;
his brother Edward was present, and the Lewises, and of course the
Bunting Harblows. There was also some other lady. I remember her
as pale blue, but for the life of me I cannot remember her name.

Quite early there was a little breeze between Edward Crampton and
Esmeer, who had ventured an opinion about the partition of Poland.
Edward was at work then upon the seventh volume of his monumental
Life of Kosciusko, and a little impatient with views perhaps not
altogether false but betraying a lamentable ignorance of accessible
literature. At any rate, his correction of Esmeer was magisterial.
After that there was a distinct and not altogether delightful pause,
and then some one, it may have been the pale-blue lady, asked Mrs.
Lewis whether her aunt Lady Carmixter had returned from her rest-
and-sun-cure in Italy. That led to a rather anxiously sustained
talk about regimen, and Willie told us how he had profited by the
no-breakfast system. It had increased his power of work enormously.
He could get through ten hours a day now without inconvenience.

"What do you do?" said Esmeer abruptly.

"Oh! no end of work. There's all the estate and looking after
things."

"But publicly?"

"I asked three questions yesterday. And for one of them I had to
consult nine books!"