A carriage containing a couple of ladies was rapidly approaching, as Toddie again raised his voice.
"Ah—h—h—want's to shee wheels——"
Madly I snatched my watch from my pocket, opened the case, and exposed the works to view. The other carriage was passing ours, and I dropped my head to avoid meeting the glance of the unknown occupants, for my few moments of contact with my dreadful nephews had made me feel inexpressibly unneat. Suddenly the carriage with the ladies stopped. I heard my own name spoken, and, raising my head quickly (encountering Budge's bullet head en route, to the serious disarrangement of my hat), I looked into the other carriage. There, erect, fresh, neat, composed, bright-eyed, fair-faced, smiling and observant,—she would have been all this, even if the angel of the resurrection had just sounded his dreadful trump,—sat Miss Alice Mayton, a lady who, for about a year, I had been adoring from afar.
"When did you arrive, Mr. Burton?" she asked, "and how long have you been officiating as child's companion? You're certainly a happy-looking trio—so unconventional. I hate to see children all dressed up and stiff as little manikins, when they go out to ride. And you look as if you'd been having such a good time with them."
"I—I assure you, Miss Mayton," said I, "that my experience has been the exact reverse of a pleasant one. If King Herod were yet alive I'd volunteer as an executioner, and engage to deliver two interesting corpses at a moment's notice."
"You dreadful wretch!" exclaimed the lady. "Mother, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Burton, Helen Lawrence's brother. How is your sister, Mr. Burton?"
"I don't know," I replied; "she has gone with her husband on a fortnight's visit to Captain and Mrs. Wayne, and I've been silly enough to promise to have an eye to the place while they're away."
"Why, how delightful!" exclaimed Miss Mayton. "Such horses! Such flowers! Such a cook!"
"And such children," said I, glaring suggestively at the imps, and rescuing from Toddie a handkerchief which he had extracted from my pocket, and was waving to the breeze.
"Why, they're the best children in the world. Helen told me so the first time I met her this season. Children will be children, you know. We had three little cousins with us last summer, and I'm sure they made me look years older than I really am."