provision was especially liberal, and on the
whole the presence of a minority destined to vote for Transome was a ground for
joking, which added to the good-humour of the chief talkers. A respectable old
acquaintance turned Radical rather against his will, was rallied with even
greater gusto than if his wife had had twins twice over. The best Trebian Tories
were far too sweet-blooded to turn against such old friends, and to make no
distinction between them and the Radical, Dissenting, Papistical, Deistical set
with whom they never dined, and probably never saw except in their imagination.
But the talk was necessarily in abeyance until the more serious business of
dinner was ended, and the wine, spirits, and tobacco raised mere satisfaction
into beatitude.
    Among the frequent though not regular guests, whom every one was glad to
see, was Mr Nolan, the retired London hosier, a wiry old gentleman past seventy,
whose square tight forehead, with its rigid hedge of grey hair, whose bushy
eyebrows, sharp dark eyes, and remarkable hooked nose, gave a handsome
distinction to his face in the midst of rural physiognomies. He had married a
Miss Pendrell early in life, when he was a poor young Londoner, and the match
had been thought as bad as ruin by her family; but fifteen years ago he had had
the satisfaction of bringing his wife to settle amongst her own friends, and of
being received with pride as a brother-in-law, retired from business, possessed
of unknown thousands, and of a most agreeable talent for anecdote and
conversation generally. No question had ever been raised as to Mr Nolan's
extraction on the strength of his hooked nose, or of his name being Baruch.
Hebrew names ran in the best Saxon families; the Bible accounted for them; and
no one among the uplands and hedgerows of that district was suspected of having
an Oriental origin unless he carried a pedlar's jewel-box. Certainly, whatever
genealogical research might have discovered, the worthy Baruch Nolan was so free
from any distinctive marks of religious persuasion - he went to church with so
ordinary an irregularity, and so often grumbled at the sermon - that there was
no ground for classing him otherwise than with good Trebian Churchmen. He was
generally regarded as a good-looking old gentleman, and a certain thin eagerness
in his aspect was attributed to the life of the metropolis, where narrow space
had the same sort of effect on men as on thickly-planted trees. Mr Nolan always
ordered his pint of port, which, after he had sipped it a little, was wont