king with
considerable jealousy on the efforts of the other; and Mr. Jawleyford was
trotting from room to room, eyeing the various pictures of himself,
wondering which was now the most like, and watching the emergence of
curtains, carpets, and sofas from their brown holland covers.

A gleam of sunshine seemed to reign throughout the mansion; the
long-covered furniture appearing to have gained freshness by its
retirement, just as a newly done-up hat surprises the wearer by its
goodness; a few days, however, soon restores the defects of either.

All these arrangements were suddenly brought to a close by the peal of the
door-bell, just as the little stage-tinkle of a theatre stops preparation,
and compels the actors to stand forward as they are. Mrs. Jawleyford threw
aside her silk apron, and took a hasty glance of her face in the old
eagle-topped mirror in the still-room; the young ladies discarded their
coarse dirty pocket-handkerchiefs, and gently drew elaborately fringed ones
through their taper fingers to give them an air of use, as they took a
hasty review of themselves in the swing mirrors; the housemaid hurried off
with a whole armful of brown holland; and Jawleyford threw himself into
attitude in an elaborately carved, richly cushioned, easy-chair, with a
Disraeli's _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ in his hand. But Jawleyford's
thoughts were far from his book. He was sitting on thorns lest there might
not be a proper guard of honour to receive Mr. Sponge at the entrance.

Jawleyford, as we said before, was not the man to entertain unless he could
do it 'properly'; and, as we all have our pitch-notes of propriety up to
which we play, we may state that Jawleyford's note was a butler and two
footmen. A butler and two footmen he looked upon as perfectly indispensable
to receiving company. He chose to have two footmen to follow the butler,
who followed the gentleman to the spacious flight of steps leading from the
great hall to the portico, as he mounted his horse. The world is governed a
good deal by appearances. Mr. Jawleyford started life with two most
unimpeachable Johns. They were nearly six feet high, heads well up, and
legs that might have done for models for a sculptor. They powdered with the
greatest propriety, and by two o'clock each day were silk-stockinged and
pumped in full-dress Jawleyford livery; sky-blue coats with massive silver
_aiguillettes_, and broad silver seams down the front and round their
waist