But the smile was seen, and the more that was seen of it, the more often was he reminded that he had lost that place in the Babington elysium which might have been his, had he not been too foolish to know what was good for him.

And a hint was given that the Boltons a short time since had not been aristocratic, whereas it was proved to him from Burke's Landed Gentry that the Smirkies had been established in Suffolk ever since Cromwell's time.

No doubt their land had gone, but still there had been Smirkies.
'How did you get on with them ?' his father asked, as he passed home through Cambridge.
'Much the same as usual.

Of course in such a family a son-in-law elect is more thought of than a useless married man.' 'They snubbed you.' 'Aunt Polly snubbed me a little, and I don't think I had quite so good a place for the shooting as in the old days.

But all that was to be expected.