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Please to come and play, if you mean to play." The squire returns to the table, and in a few minutes the game is decided by a dexterous finesse of the captain against the Hazeldeans. The clock strikes ten; the servants enter with a tray; the squire counts up his own and his wife's losings; and the captain and parson divide sixteen shillings between them.
Thank Heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never tuft- hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee or count! I should feel sure he was a courier, or runaway valley-de-sham. Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed, Harry! pshaw, good English style that!
But Audley Egerton never appeared aware of that fact. As he was not himself descended from the Hazeldeans, he did not trouble himself about their genealogy; and he took care to impress it upon the Leslies that his generosity on their behalf was solely to be ascribed to his respect for his wife's memory and kindred.
It was the gayest public edifice in the whole village, though the village possessed no less than three other monuments of the Vitruvian genius of the Hazeldeans, to wit, the almshouse, the school, and the parish pump. A more elegant, enticing, coquettish pair of stocks never gladdened the eye of a justice of the peace. And Squire Hazeldean's eye was gladdened.
What a man does within the range of his family connections does not carry with it that eclat which invests a munificence exhibited on public occasions. Either people care nothing about it, or tacitly suppose it to be but his duty. It was true, too, as the squire had observed, that Randal Leslie was even less distantly related to the Hazeldeans than to Mrs.
However, towards morning, when dreams are said to be prophetic, he fell into a most delightful slumber, a slumber peopled by visions fitted to lure on, through labyrinths of law, predestined chancellors, or wreck upon the rocks of glory the inebriate souls of youthful ensigns; dreams from which Rood Hall emerged crowned with the towers of Belvoir or Raby, and looking over subject lands and manors wrested from the nefarious usurpation of Thornhills and Hazeldeans; dreams in which Audley Egerton's gold and power, rooms in Downing Street, and saloons in Grosvenor Square, had passed away to the smiling dreamer, as the empire of Chaldaea passed to Darius the Median.
Here the Hazeldeans entered, arm-in-arm, and the fat butler announced dinner. The squire was unusually taciturn, Mrs. Hazeldean thoughtful, Mrs. Dale languid and headachy. The parson, who seldom enjoyed the luxury of converse with a scholar, save when he quarrelled with Dr. Riccaboeca, was animated by Randal's repute for ability into a great desire for argument. "A glass of wine, Mr. Leslie.
Some were refused because they were known so well: "Friends were best at a distance," said the Hazeldeans; others because they were not known at all: "No good comes of strangers," said the Hazeldeans. And finally, as the house fell more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into thorough repair: "As if one was made of money!" said the Hazeldeans.
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