"And what a home-y family!" said Doctor John Hautayne.

"_We_ have an old home-y house," said Miss Pennington, suddenly, "with
landscape-papered walls and cosey, deep windows and big chimneys. And
we don't half use it. Doctor Hautayne, I mean to have a party! Will
you stay and come to it?"

"Any time within my two months' leave," replied Doctor Hautayne, "and
with very great pleasure."

"So she will have it before very long," said Leslie, telling us about
the talk the next day.

It! Well, when Miss Pennington took up a thing she _did_ take it up!
That does not come in here, though,--any more of it.

The Penningtons are very proud people. They have not a very great deal
of money, like the Haddens, and they are not foremost in everything
like the Marchbankses; somehow they do not seem to care to take the
trouble for that; but they are so _established_; it is a family like
an old tree, that is past its green branching time, and makes little
spread or summer show, but whose roots reach out away underneath, and
grasp more ground than all the rest put together.

They live in an old house that is just like them. It has not a
new-fashioned thing about it. The walls are square, plain brick,
painted gray; and there is a low, broad porch in front, and then
terraces, flagged with gray stone and bordered with flower-beds at
each side and below. They have peacocks and guinea-hens, and more
roses and lilies and larkspurs and foxgloves and narcissus than