n issue.

Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally enriched
merchants, it appeared; a snippet or two of the fringe of aristocracy
lay here and there among them; and one racy-of-the-soil old son of
Thames, having the manners proper to last century's yeoman. Mr. Pempton
knew something of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing by
name; a ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the
ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which
he would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near
to the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of
the country, was rare. Victor exclaimed 'Come!' in ravishment over the
picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts
of England; and his look at Nataly proposed. Her countenance was
inapprehensive. He perceived resistance, and said: 'I have met two
or three of them in the train: agreeable men: Gladding, the banker; a
General Fanning; that man Blathenoy, great billbroker. But the fact
is, close on London, we're independent of neighbours; we mean to be.
Lakelands and London practically join.'

'The mother city becoming the suburb,' murmured Colney, in report of the
union.

'You must expect to be invaded, sir,' said Mr. Sowerby; and Victor
shrugged: 'We are pretty safe.'

'The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one outside is
heard fingering the handle nigh midnight,' Fenellan threw out his airy
nothing of a remark.

It struck on Nataly's heart. 'So you will not let us be lonely here,'
she said to her guests.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations. Sound of a
subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice, informed her of their
'very deep happiness in the privilege.'

He comforted her. Nesta smiled on him thankfully.

'Don't imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from neighbours,
in a house like this; and they have a claim,' said Lady Grace, quitting
the table.

Fenellan and Colney thought so:

'Like mice at a cupboard.'

'Beetles in a kitchen.'

'No, no-no, no!' Victor shook head, pitiful over the good people likened
to things unclean, and royally upraising them: in doing which, he
scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter
moods of late. 'No, but it's a rapture to breathe the air here!' His
lifted chest and nostrils were for the encouragement of Nataly to soar
beside him.

She sum