ma'am: he has breed. I do not forget"--with another bow--"his
mother's descent from the Annesleys of Anglesea and Valentia: but she
will forgive me that, while watching him, I thought rather of his
blood derived from my own great-great-grandfather Robert, and of our
common ancestors--Walter, the king's standard-bearer, Edward, who
carried the heart of the Bruce to Palestine--but I weary Mr. Matthew
perhaps?"

"Not at all, sir," the apothecary protested: rubbing a lump of sugar
on the rind of a lemon. "You will suffer me to mix you a glass of
punch while I listen? I am a practical man, who has been forced to
make his own way in the world, and has made it, I thank God. I never
found these ancestors of any use to me; but if one of them had time
and leisure to carry the heart of the Bruce to Jerusalem I hope I
have the leisure to hear about it. Did he return, may I ask?"

"He did not, sir. The Saracens slew him before the Holy Sepulchre,
and in fact the undertaking was, as you would regard it,
unprofitable. But it gave us the palmer-shells on our coat of arms--
argent, a cross sable, in each corner three escallops of the last.
I believe, ma'am, the coat differs somewhat in your husband's branch
of the family?" He spread a hand on the table so that the
candle-light fell on his signet ring.

Mrs. Wesley smiled. "We keep the scallops, sir."

"Scallops!" grunted the apothecary. "Better for you, Susanna, if
your husband had ever found the oyster!"

Garrett Wesley glanced at him from under his badger-gray brows.