CHAPTER XXIX--A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS.
Notable as my reception had been (under that unfortunate mistake of Mrs.
Ponto that I was related to Lord Snobbington, which I was not permitted to correct), it was nothing compared to the bowing and kotooing, the raptures and flurry which preceded and welcomed the visit of a real live lord and lord's son, a brother officer of Cornet Wellesley Ponto, in the 120th Hussars, who came over with the young Cornet from Guttlebury, where their distinguished regiment was quartered.

This was my Lord Gules, Lord Saltire's grandson and heir: a very young, short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking nobleman, who cannot have left the nursery very long, and who, though he accepted the honest Major's invitation to the Evergreens in a letter written in a school-boy handwriting, with a number of faults of spelling, may yet be a very fine classical scholar for what I know: having had his education at Eton, where he and young Ponto were inseparable.
At any rate, if he can't write, he has mastered a number of other accomplishments wonderful for one of his age and size.

He is one of the best shots and riders in England.

He rode his horse Abracadabra, and won the famous Guttlebury steeple-chase.

He has horses entered at half the races in the country (under other people's names; for the old lord is a strict hand, and will not hear of betting or gambling).