A Family Affair Author:Hugh Conway General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1885 Original Publisher: H. Holt Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select ... more »from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. AN ARGUMENT AND AN ARRIVAL. ON the night when the down-train carried the golden-headed child to Blacktown, the Talberts had dined at home without company. The two men were still at the table, sipping their claret and smoking cigarettes. They were neither great drinking men nor great smoking men. If such habits are sins, the Talberts might have gone on as they were going for many years, and then made atonement very easily. It is needless to state that the two brothers were faultlessly dressed in the evening garb of the nineteenth century. It will also be guessed that the dinner-table was most tastefully laid out. In spite of the season being midwinter it was gay with flowers. Quaint antique silver spoons and forks did the duty which is exacted from the florid king's pattern and the ugly fiddle pattern abominations of our day. The napery was of the whitest and finest description. The polish on the glass was such as to make the most careful housewife or conscientious servant wonder and envy. There is a tale connected with the glass. Once upon a time a lady who was dining at Hazle- wood House, asked her hosts, with pardonable curiosity, how they were able to induce their servants to send the decanters and wine glasses to the table in such a glorious state of refulgency. Horace Talbert smiled, and answered with exquisite simplicity -- " We should never think of trusting our glass to the hands of servants. My brother and I see to it ourselves." Thereupon the lady, who had marriageable sisters, and was no doubt keenly alive to the fact that her hosts were eligibl...« less