e had a
brother, however, still more wealthy than herself, and who increased his
fortune by continuing to carry on the trade which had first enriched his
family. At length he summed up his books, washed his hands of commerce,
and retired to Nettlewood, to become a gentleman; and here my much
respected grand-uncle was seized with the rage of making himself a man
of consequence. He tried what marrying a woman of family would do; but
he soon found that whatever advantage his family might derive from his
doing so, his own condition was but little illustrated. He next resolved
to become a man of family himself. His father had left Scotland when
very young, and bore, I blush to say, the vulgar name of Scrogie. This
hapless dissyllable my uncle carried in person to the herald office in
Scotland; but neither Lyon, nor Marchmont, nor Islay, nor Snadoun,
neither herald nor pursuivant, would patronise Scrogie.--Scrogie!--there
could nothing be made out of it--so that my worthy relative had recourse
to the surer side of the house, and began to found his dignity on his
mother's name of Mowbray. In this he was much more successful, and I
believe some sly fellow stole for him a slip from your own family tree,
Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's, which, I daresay, you have never missed. At
any rate, for his _argent_ and _or_, he got a handsome piece of
parchment, blazoned with a white lion for Mowbray, to be borne
quarterly, with three stunted or scrog-bushes for Scrogie, and became
thenceforth Mr. Scrogie Mowbray, or rather, as he subscribed himself,
Reginald (his former Christian name was Ronald) S. Mowbray. He had a son
who most undutifully laughed at all this, refused the honours of the
high name of Mowbray, and insisted on retaining his father's original
appellative of Scrogie, to the great annoyance of his said father's
ears, and damage of his temper."

"Why, faith, betwixt the two," said Mowbray, "I own I should have
preferred my own name, and I think the old gentleman's taste rather
better than the young one's."

"True; but both were wilful, absurd originals, with a happy obstinacy of
temper, whether derived from Mowbray or Scrogie I know not, but which
led them so often into opposition, that the offended father, Reginald S.
Mowbray, turned his recusant son Scrogie fairly out of doors; and the
fellow would have paid for his plebeian spirit with a vengeance, had he
not found refuge with a surviving partner of the original Scrogie of
al