hard-riding women. She and her husband were perfectly reckless. One
heard of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had jumped it;
and she bets and goes racing. If George Pendyce is not in love with her,
I'm very much mistaken. He's been seeing far too much of her in town.
She's one of those women that men are always hanging about!"

At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed
a menu carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace
Pendyce supped his soup.

"This soup," he said to Mrs. Bellew, "reminds me of your dear old
father; he was extraordinarily fond of it. I had a great respect for
your father--a wonderful man! I always said he was the most determined
man I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most obstinate man
in the three kingdoms!"

He frequently made use of the expression "in the three kingdoms," which
sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was descended from
Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the Cornish giants,
one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile, had once thrown a
cow over a wall.

"Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew. I have a
lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate, and
I find that an individualist is never contented. My tenants have
everything they want, but it's impossible to satisfy them. There's a
fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap. I
don't give in to him, of course. If he had his way, he'd go back to the
old days, farm the land in his own fashion. He wants to buy it from me.
Old vicious system of yeoman farming. Says his grandfather had it. He's