‘No!’ roared Jawleyford, determined not to be done out of his grievance. ‘No!’ repeated he; ‘do you call that nothing?’

‘Why, nothing to make yourself unhappy about,’ replied Mrs Jawleyford, rather pleased than otherwise; for she was glad it was not from rings, the jeweller, and, moreover, hated the monotony of Jawleyford Court, and was glad of anything to relieve it. If she had had her own way, she would have gadded about at watering-places all the year round.

‘Well,’ said Jawleyford, with a toss of the head and a shrug of resignation, ‘you’ll have me in gaol; I see that.’

‘Nay, my dear J.,’ rejoined his wife, soothingly; ‘I’m sure you’ve plenty of money.’

‘Have I!’ ejaculated Jawleyford. ‘Do you suppose, if I had, I’d have left Laverick Wells without paying Miss Bustlebey, or given a bill at three months for the house-rent?’

‘Well, but my dear, you’ve nothing to do but tell Mr Screwemtight to get you some money from the tenants.’

‘Money from the tenants!’ replied Mr Jawleyford. ‘Screwemtight tells me he can’t get another farthing from any man on the estate.’

‘Oh, pooh!’ said Mrs Jawleyford; ‘you’re far too good to them. I always say Screwemtight looks far more to their interest than he does to yours.’

Jawleyford, we may observe, was one of the rather numerous race of paper-booted, pen-and-ink landowners. He always dressed in the country as he would in St James’s Street, and his communications with his tenantry were chiefly confined to dining with them twice a year in the great entrance-hall, after Mr Screwemtight had eased them of their cash in the steward’s-room. Then Mr Jawleyford would shine forth the very impersonification of what a landlord ought to be. Dressed in the height of the fashion, as if by his clothes to give the lie to his words, he would expatiate on the delights of such meetings of equality; declare that, next to those spent with his family, the only really happy moments of his life were those when he was surrounded by his tenantry; he doated on the manly character of the English farmer. Then he would advert to the great antiquity of the Jawleyford family, many generations of whom looked down upon them from the walls of the old hall; some on their war-steeds, some armed cap-àa-pie, some in court-dresses, some in Spanish ones, one in a white dress with gold brocade breeches and a hat with an enormous plume, old Jawleyford (father of the present one) in the Windsor uniform, and our friend himself, the very prototype of what then stood before them. Indeed, he had been painted in the act of addressing his hereditary chaw-bacons in the hall in which the picture was suspended. There he stood, with his bright auburn hair (now rather badger-pied, perhaps, but still very passable by candlelight) -- his bright auburn hair, we say, swept boldly off his lofty forehead, his hazy grey eyes flashing with the excitement of drink and animation, his left hand reposing on the hip of his well-fitting black pantaloons, while the right one, radiant with rings, and trimmed with upturned wristband, sawed the air, as he rounded off the periods of the well-accustomed saws.

Jawleyford, like a good many people, was very hospitable when in full fig -- two soups, two fishes, and the necessary concomitants; but he would see anyone far enough before he would give him a dinner merely because he wanted one. That sort of ostentatious banqueting has about brought country society in general to a dead lock. People tire of the constant revision of plate, linen, and china.

Mrs Jawleyford, on the other hand, was a very rough-and-ready sort of woman, never put out of her way; and though she constantly preached the old doctrine that girls ‘are much better single than married,’ she was always on the look-out for opportunities of contradicting her assertions.

She was an Irish lady, with a pedigree almost as long as Jawleyford’s, but more compressible pride, and if she couldn’t get a duke, she would take a marquis or an earl, or even put up with a rich commoner.