The squire gets up to stretch his legs, and, the insinuation against his hospitality recurring to his thoughts, calls out to his wife, "Write to Rickeybockey to-morrow yourself, Harry, and ask him to come and spend two or three days here.

There, Mrs.Dale, you hear me ?" "Yes," said Mrs.Dale, putting her hands to her ears in implied rebuke at the loudness of the squire's tone.

"My dear sir, do remember that I'm a sad nervous creature." "Beg pardon," muttered Mr.Hazeldean, turning to his son, who having got tired of the caricatures, had fished out for himself the great folio County History, which was the only book in the library that the squire much valued, and which he usually kept under lock and key, in his study, together with the field-books and steward's accounts, but which he had reluctantly taken into the drawing-room that day, in order to oblige Captain Higginbotham.

For the Higginbothams--an old Saxon family, as the name evidently denotes--had once possessed lands in that very county; and the captain, during his visits to Hazeldean Hall, was regularly in the habit of asking to look into the County History, for the purpose of refreshing his eyes, and renovating his sense of ancestral dignity, with the following paragraph therein: To the left of the village of Dunder, and pleasantly situated in a hollow, lies Botham Hall, the residence of the ancient family of Higginbotham, as it is now commonly called.

Yet it appears by the county rolls, and sundry old deeds, that the family formerly styled itself Higges, till the Manor House lying in Botham, they gradually assumed the appellation of Higges-in-Botham, and in process of time, yielding to the corruptions of the vulgar, Higginbotham." "What, Frank! my County History!" cried the squire.