"No. It was a poly-polypus a polypus, that made him snuffle in his
speech."

"Ach Gott!" sighed the Pole; but whether in sorrow for poor "Bob," or in
utter weariness at his historian, was hard to say.

"Lady Foxington, too," said Mrs. Ricketts, "made a serious request that
we should be intimate with her friend Lady Hester. She was candid enough
to say that her Ladyship would not suit me. 'She has no soul, Zoe,'
wrote she, 'so I need n't say more.'"

"Dat is ver bad," said the Pole, gravely.

"Still, I should have made her acquaintance, for the sake of that young
creature Miss Dalton, I think they call her and whom I rather suspect to
be a distant cousin of ours."

"Yes; there were Dawkinses at Exeter a very respectable solicitor,
one was, Joe Dawkins," came in Purvis; "and he used to say we were
co-co-co-connections."

"This family, sir, is called Dalton, and not even a stutter can make
that Dawkins."

"Couldn't your friend Mr. Foglass find out something about these Daltons
for us, as he goes through Germany?" asked Mrs. Ricketts of the Colonel.

"No one could execute such a commission better, madam, only you must
give him his instructions in writing. Foglass," added he, at the top of
his voice, "let me have your note-book for a moment."

"With pleasure," said he, presenting his snuff-box.

"No; your memorandum-book," screamed the other, louder.

"It's gone down," whispered the deaf man. "I lost the key on Tuesday
last."

"Not your watch, man. I want to write a line in your note-book;" and he
made a pantomimic of writing.

"Yes, certainly; if Mrs. R. will permit, I'll write to her with
pleasure."

"Confound him!" muttered Haggerstone; and, taking up a visiting-card, he
wrote on the back of it, "Could you trace the Daltons as you go back by
Baden?"

The deaf man at once brightened up; a look of shrewd intelligence
lighted up his fishy eyes as he said,

"Yes, of course; say, what do you want?"

"Antecedents family fortune," wrote Haggerstone.

"If dey have de tin," chimed in the Pole.

"If they be moral and of irreproachable reputation," said Mrs. Ricketts.

"Are they related to the other Dawkinses?" asked Purvis. "Let him ask if
their mother was not godfather to no, I mean grandfather to the Reverend
Jere-Jere-Jere--"

"Be quiet, Scroope will you be quiet?"

"There, you have it all, now," said Haggerstone, as he finished writing;
"their 'family, fortune, flaws, and frailties' 'what they did,