Mr.Temple is invariably polite to everybody, but when he goes out of his way to do honor to a man like this he only makes it harder for those of us who are trying to help our sons and brothers--" to which Mrs.Cheston had replied with a twinkle in her mouse eyes and a toss of her gray head:--"So was Byron, my dear woman--a very dreadful and most disreputable person, but I can't spare him from my Library, nor should you." None of these criticisms would have affected St.George had he heard them, and we may be sure no one dared tell him.

He was too busy, in fact--and so was Harry, helping him for that matter--setting his house in order for the coming function.
That the table itself might be made the more worthy of the great man, orders were given that the big silver loving-cup--the one presented to his father by no less a person than the Marquis de Castellux himself--should be brought out to be filled later on with Cloth of Gold roses so placed that their rich color and fragrance would reach both the eyes and the nostrils of his guests, while the rest of the family silver, brightened to a mirror finish by Todd, was either sent down to Aunt Jemima to be ready for the special dishes for which the house was famous, or disposed on the side-board and serving-table for instant use when required.

Easy-chairs were next brought from upstairs--tobacco and pipes, with wax candles, were arranged on teak-wood trays, and an extra dozen or so of bubble-blown glasses banked on a convenient shelf.

The banquet room too, for it was late summer, was kept as cool as the season permitted, the green shutters being closed, thus barring out the heat of early September--and the same precaution was taken in the dressing-room, which was to serve as a receptacle for hats and canes.
And Todd as usual was his able assistant.

All the darky's training came into play when his master was giving a dinner: what Madeira to decant, and what to leave in its jacket of dust, with its waistcoat of a label unlaundered for half a century; the temperature of the claret; the exact angle at which the Burgundy must be tilted and when it was to be opened--and how--especially the "how"-- the disturbing of a single grain of sediment being a capital offence; the final brandies, particularly that old Peach Brandy hidden in Tom Coston's father's cellar during the war of 1812, and sent to that gentleman as an especial "mark of my appreciation to my dear friend and kinsman, St.George Wilmot Temple," etc., etc .-- all this Todd knew to his finger ends.
For with St.George to dine meant something more than the mere satisfying of one's hunger.