"
"Eh, Uncle Clegg, you're worth twenty dead ones yet," said Mrs.
Mesurier, reassuringly.
"What a strange old gentleman!" said Mrs. Turtle, somewhat bewildered,
as this family apparition left the room.
"Good-bye, Uncle Clegg," Esther was heard singing in the hall.
"Good-bye, be careful of the steps. Good-bye. Give our love to
Aunt Esther."
Then the door would bang, and the whole house breathe a gigantic sigh of
humorous relief.
(This was the kind of thing girls at home had to put up with!)
"Well, mother, did you ever see such a funny old person?" said Esther,
on her return to the parlour.
"You mustn't laugh at him," Mrs. Mesurier would say, laughing herself;
"he's a good old man."
"No doubt he's good enough, mother dear; but he's unmistakably funny,"
Esther would reply, with a whimsical thought of the family tree. Yes,
they were a distinguished race!
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER FOURTEEN CONCLUDED
No, the Mesuriers had absolutely nothing to hope for from their
relations,--nothing to look back upon, less to look forward to. Most
families, however poor and even _bourgeois_, had some memories to
dignify them or some one possible contingency of pecuniary inheritance.
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