It was Pen's father's arm-chair;
and Arthur remembers the days when he would as soon have thought of
mounting the king's throne as of seating himself in that arm-chair. He
asks if Miss Stokes--she is the very image of her mamma--if she can
play? He should like to hear a tune on that piano. She plays. He hears
the notes of the old piano once more, enfeebled by age, but he does
not listen to the player. He is listening to Laura singing as in the
days of their youth, and sees his mother bending and beating time over
the shoulder of the girl.
The dinner at Fairoaks given in Pen's honor by his tenant, and at
which old Mrs. Stokes, Captain Glanders, Squire Hobnell, and the
clergyman and his lady, from Tinckleton, were present, was very stupid
and melancholy for Pen, until the waiter from Clavering (who aided the
captain's stable-boy and Mrs. Stokes's butler) whom Pen remembered as
a street boy, and who was now indeed barber in that place, dropped a
plate over Pen's shoulder, on which Mr.
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