Mrs.
Carnaby came forward kindly, and offered him a nice warm hand; while the elder sister was content to bow, and thank him for coming, and hope that he was well.

As yet it had not become proper for a gentleman, visiting ladies, to yawn, and throw himself into the nearest chair, and cross his legs, and dance one foot, and ask how much the toy-terrier cost.
Mr.Jellicorse made a fine series of bows, not without a scrape or two, which showed his goodly calf; and after that he waited for the gracious invitation to sit down.
"If I understood your letter clearly," Mistress Yordas began, when these little rites were duly accomplished, "you have something important to tell us concerning our poor property here.

A small property, Mr.
Jellicorse, compared with that of the Duke of Lunedale, but perhaps a little longer in one family." "The duke is a new-fangled interloper," replied hypocritical Jellicorse, though no other duke was the husband of the duchess of whom he indited daily; "properties of that sort come and go, and only tradesmen notice it.

Your estates have been longer in the seisin of one family, madam, than any other in the Riding, or perhaps in Yorkshire." "We never seized them!" cried Mrs.Carnaby, being sensitive as to ancestral thefts, through tales about cattle-lifting.

"You must be aware that they came to us by grant from the Crown, or even before there was any Crown to grant them." "I beg your pardon for using a technical word, without explaining it.
Seisin is a legal word, which simply means possession, or rather the bodily holding of a thing, and is used especially of corporeal hereditaments.