'A great dinner-party,' thinks I to myself, seeing these preparations (and not, perhaps, displeased at the idea that some of the best people in the neighbourhood were coming to see me).

'Hark, theres the first bell ringing! 'said Ponto, moving away; and, in fact, a clamorous harbinger of victuals began clanging from the stable turret, and announced the agreeable fact that dinner would appear in half-an-hour.

'If the dinner is as grand as the dinner-bell,' thought I, 'faith, I'm in good quarters!' and had leisure, during the half-hour's interval, not only to advance my own person to the utmost polish of elegance which it is capable of receiving, to admire the pedigree of the Pontos hanging over the chimney, and the Ponto crest and arms emblazoned on the wash-hand basin and jug, but to make a thousand reflections on the happiness of a country life--upon the innocent friendliness and cordiality of rustic intercourse; and to sigh for an opportunity of retiring, like Ponto, to my own fields, to my own vine and fig-tree, with a placens uxor in my domus, and a half-score of sweet young pledges of affection sporting round my paternal knee.
Clang! At the end of thirty minutes, dinner-bell number two pealed from the adjacent turret.

I hastened downstairs, expecting to find a score of healthy country folk in the drawing-room.

There was only one person there; a tall and Roman-nosed lady, glistering over with bugles, in deep mourning.