humorous relief.

(This was the kind of thing girls at home had to put up with!)

"Well, mother, did you ever see such a funny old person?" said Esther,
on her return to the parlour.

"You mustn't laugh at him," Mrs. Mesurier would say, laughing herself;
"he's a good old man."

"No doubt he's good enough, mother dear; but he's unmistakably funny,"
Esther would reply, with a whimsical thought of the family tree. Yes,
they were a distinguished race!




CHAPTER XVI


CHAPTER FOURTEEN CONCLUDED

No, the Mesuriers had absolutely nothing to hope for from their
relations,--nothing to look back upon, less to look forward to. Most
families, however poor and even _bourgeois_, had some memories to
dignify them or some one possible contingency of pecuniary inheritance.
At the very least, they had a ghost-story in the family. You seldom read
the biographies of writers or artists without finding references,
however remote, to at least one person of some distinction or substance.
To have had even a curate for an ancestor, or a connection, would have