alluded above.

It was I who was now silent.

"Augustus, if you purpose trifling, you may leave the room."

"Oh, Aunt, I beg your pardon. I never meant--"

"I cannot understand what impels you to adopt such a manner to me, when I
am trying to do something for you."

I hastened to strengthen my apologies with a manner becoming the possible
descendant of a king toward a lady of distinction, and my Aunt was
pleased to pass over my recent lapse from respect. She now broached her
favorite topic, which I need scarcely tell you is genealogy, beginning
with her own.

"If your title to royal blood," she said, "were as plain as mine (through
Admiral Bombo, you know), you would not need any careful research."

She told me a great deal of genealogy, which I spare you; it was not one
family tree, it was a forest of them. It gradually appeared that a
grandmother of my mother's grandfather had been a Fanning, and there were
sundry kinds of Fannings, right ones and wrong ones; the point for me
was, what kind had mine been? No family record showed this. If it was
Fanning of the Bon Homme Richard variety, or Fanning of the Alamance,
then I was no king's descendant.

"Worthy New England people, I understand," said my Aunt with her nod of
indulgent stateliness, referring to the Bon Homme Richard species, "but