'You tell me, sir, you had this brutal story from the Lord-Lieutenant of
the county?'

'Ay, from Lord Shale. But I won't have you going to him and betraying
our connection with a--'

'Halloo !' Captain Bulsted sang out to his wife on the lawn. 'And now,
squire, I have had my dose. And you will permit me to observe, that I
find it emphatically what we used to call at school black-jack.'

'And you were all the better for it afterwards, William.'

'We did not arrive at that opinion, sir. Harry, your arm. An hour with
the ladies will do us both good. The squire,' he murmured, wiping his
forehead as he went out, 'has a knack of bringing us into close proximity
with hell-fire when he pleases.'

Julia screamed on beholding us, 'Aren't you two men as pale as death!'

Janet came and looked. 'Merely a dose,' said the captain. 'We are
anxious to play battledore and shuttlecock madly.'

'So he shall, the dear!' Julia caressed him. 'We'll all have a
tournament in the wet-weather shed.'

Janet whispered to me, 'Was it--the Returning Thanks?'

'The what?' said I, with the dread at my heart of something worse than I
had heard.