Janet's influence with him, and of what he expected
from my return to Riversley.

Peterborough informed me that he suffered persecution over the last
glasses of Port in the evening, through the squire's persistent
inquiries as to whether a woman had anything to do with my staying so
long abroad. 'A lady, sir?' quoth Peterborough. 'Lady, if you like,'
rejoined the squire. 'You parsons and petticoats must always mince the
meat to hash the fact.' Peterborough defended his young friend Harry's
moral reputation, and was amazed to hear that the squire did not think
highly of a man's chastity. The squire acutely chagrined the sensitive
gentleman by drawling the word after him, and declaring that he tossed
that kind of thing into the women's wash-basket. Peterborough,
not without signs of indignation, protesting, the squire asked him
point-blank if he supposed that Old England had been raised to the head
of the world by such as he. In fine, he favoured Peterborough with a
lesson in worldly views. 'But these,' Peterborough said to me, 'are
not the views, dear Harry--if they are the views of ladies of any
description, which I take leave to doubt--not the views of the ladies
you and I would esteem. For instance, the ladies of this household.' My
aunt Dorothy's fate was plain.

In reply to my grandfather's renewed demand to know whether any one
of those High-Dutch women had got hold of me, Peterborough said: 'Mr.
Beltham, the only lady of whom it could be suspected that my
friend Harry regarded her with more than ordinary admiration was
Hereditary-Princess of one of the ancient princely Houses of Germany.'
My grandfather thereupon said, 'Oh!' pushed the wine, and was stopped.

Peterborough chuckled over this 'Oh!' and the stoppage of further
questions, while acknowledging that the luxury of a pipe would help to
make him more charitable. He enjoyed the Port of his native land, but he
did, likewise, feel the want of one whiff or so of the less restrictive
foreigner's pipe; and he begged me to note the curiosity of our worship
of aristocracy and royalty; and we, who were such slaves to rank, and
such tyrants in our own households,--we Britons were the great sticklers
for freedom! His conclusion was, that we were not logical. We would have
a Throne, which we would not allow the liberty to do anything to make it
worthy of rational veneration: we would have a peerage, of which we were
so jealous that it formed almost an assembly of aut