Mesurier.
"What's his name, Jane?"
"He wouldn't give it, miss. He said it would be all right. Mrs. Mesurier
would know him well enough."
"Whoever can it be? What's he like, Jane?"
"He looks like a workman, miss,--very old, and rather dotey."
"Who can it be? Go and ask him his name again."
Esther would then arouse her mother; and the maid would come in to say
that at last the old man had been persuaded to confide his name as
Clegg--Samuel Clegg.
"Tell the missus it's Samuel Clegg," the old man had said, with a
certain amusing conceit. "She'll be glad enough to see Samuel Clegg."
"Why!" said Mrs. Mesurier, "it's your father's poor old uncle, Mr.
Clegg. Now, girls, you mustn't run away, but try and be nice to him.
He's a simple, good, old man."
Mrs. Mesurier was no more interested in Mr. Clegg than her daughters;
but she had a great fund of humanity, and an inexhaustible capacity for
suffering bores brilliantly.
"Why, I never!" she would say, adapting her idiom to make the old man
feel at home, as he was presently ushered in, chuntering and triumphant;
"you don't mean to say it's Uncle Clegg.
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