once want to stand for Parliament, but somehow or other the scheme
fell through, and since then he's always spoken rather bitterly of the
House of Commons. Their daughter, whom I took in to dinner, is a very
pretty girl of nineteen, with plenty to say for herself. She told
me they were going to be in London for about three weeks in June and
July, so I hope to see something of them. Besides the PENFOLDS there
were Mr. and Mrs. TOLLAND; Mrs. TOLLAND in a green silk dress with
more gold chains wound about various parts of her person than I ever
saw on any other woman. Two officers of CHORKLE'S Volunteers were
there with their wives, Major WORBOYS, an enormous, red-whiskered man
who doesn't think much, privately, of CHORKLE'S ability as a soldier,
and Captain YATMAN, a dapper little fellow, whose weakness it is to
pretend to know all about smart Society in London.

Altogether there were twenty guests. Precisely at seven o'clock a
bugle sounded on the landing outside the drawing-room to announce
dinner. Everything in the CHORKLE family is done by bugle-calls.
They have _reveillé_ at 7 A.M., the sergeants' call for the servants'
dinner, and lights out at eleven o'clock every night. As soon as the
call was finished, CHORKLE went up to Lady PENFOLD. "Shall we march,
Lady PENFOLD?" he said. "Sir CHARLES will bring up the rear with Mrs.
C." And thus we went down-stairs.

The dinner was a most tremendous and wonderful entertainment, and must
have lasted two hours, at the very least. There were two soups, three
fishes, dozens of _entrées_, three or four joints--the mere memory of
it is indigestive. The talk was almost entirely about local matters,
the chief subject of discussion being the Mastership of the Foxhounds.
The present Master is not going to keep them on, as he is a very old
man, and everybody seems to want Sir CHARLES to take them, but he