How I hate this British climate! How I hate to wear always and always stout shoes, sensible clothes, serviceable hats, short skirts, looking like a frump in the intervals of sunshine, that I may be properly attired when it rains! I shed a few secret tears now and then for sheer down-heartedness and discouragement. I was desperately cold, and my wetting had given me a feverish, teeth-chattering sort of feeling. Hungry I was, too, and in such a rage with the beastly pony that I wished she had been eaten in the French Revolution; she was too old to be tender, even then.

Now ensued a brief, all too brief, season of content on a fairly level bit of road. It was not over an eighth of a mile in length, and must have been an accident on the part of Nature. I was so numb and so sleepy that I just heard Sir Archibald's sigh of gratitude as he took his seat for a moment beside me, and then I subsided into a semi-comatose state, too tired to make even one more expiring effort to be agreeable. I am not clear as to the next few moments, in which I felt a sudden sense of warmth and well-being and companionship. I must have dropped off into a sort of dream, and in the dream I felt the merest touch, just the brush of something on my cheek, or I thought I did. Slight as it was, there was something unaccustomed about it that made me come hastily into the conscious world, and my waking was made the more speedy by a sudden stir and noise and ejaculation. We had come to another hill, and Sir Archibald had evidently wished for once to omit the walking-up process. Greytoria, outraged in her deepest sensibilities by the unwonted addition of Sir Archibald's weight to her burdens, braced her hind legs firmly and proceeded to achieve the impossible by slithering backward down the hill. Sir Archibald leaped out on the one side; I put the drag on, or off, whichever is wrong, and leaped out on the other.

He adjusted the drag and gave Greytoria a clip that she will describe to her grandchildren on future winter evenings. I, with matchless presence of mind, got behind the pony chaise and put my shoulder under the back to break its descent. And so we wound wearily up the hill, and on reaching the top saw the lighted hotel just ahead of us.

In silence we traversed the few remaining yards, each busy with his own thought. Silently we entered the gate and gave Greytoria to the waiting groom. Silently and stiffly I alighted from the chaise, helped by Sir Archibald's supporting arm. He held my hand a second longer than was necessary; held it, half dropped it, and held it again; or did something unusual with it that was widely separated from an ordinary good-night 'shake.'

There was no harm in that, for the most unsentimental man feels a sort of brotherly sympathy for a damp, cold, hungry, tired, nice girl.

But about that other—episode?... Of course if he did, I should resent it bitterly; but if it were only a dream I must not blame him even in thought.... There is always the risk that a man might misunderstand the frank good-fellowship in which we American girls are brought up, and fail to realise that with all our nonsense we draw the line just as heavily, and in precisely the same place as our British cousins.... But why do I think about it any more?... It wouldn't be a bit like him, so probably he didn't.... In fact it is so entirely out of character that he simply couldn't.... And yet I suppose the number of men who actually couldn't is comparatively small.

MRS. MACGILL

Well, we spent the day till five o'clock in that dreary spot, cold and wretched. Then Sir Archibald proposed that I should go home with Mrs. Pomeroy in the motor; they said we should get there quicker that way! He meant to drive Miss Pomeroy in the pony chaise, not being at all afraid, he said, of any pony, however spirited. Of course nothing would induce me to enter a pony carriage drawn by that animal again. A motor is more dangerous in some ways, but at any rate it cannot sit down like that pony, and they all assured us that it was both safe and speedy. Mrs. Pomeroy had been quite at ease in it, she said, so at last I consented to go. Cecilia tied on my bonnet with my grey wool shawl, and we set out. It surprises me that motoring should have become a favourite pastime with so-called fashionable people, for certainly one does not appear to advantage in motoring garments. The cold was intense, and at first everything whizzed past me at such a rate that I could remember nothing except two lines that Cecilia read to me last evening, about 'the void car hurled abroad by reinless steeds.'

There were no steeds, of course, nor reins, and the car was not void, but that was quite the motion. My bonnet, in spite of the shawl and string, was instantly torn from my head. I begged Johnson, a very civil Scotchman who could understand what I said, to stop the machine for a few moments and let me breathe. Cecilia advised me to remove the bonnet and trust wholly to the shawl. My hair is not thick, especially on the top, and I soon had all the sensation of the head being padded in ice, which we read of as a treatment for brain fever.