out of the road, for there
is a treacherous pitch on the other side, and for me to let them topple
into the ditch might be profitable, but hardly professional."

We had barely turned into low bushes when the stage came alongside. The
horses dropped back to a walk, as they passed, for it was a decided up
grade for thirty yards, so that we had a good chance to view both
equipage and occupants. To my surprise I saw that the coach was the
Jenks-Smith's. I did not know they had returned from the trip abroad
where they had been making their annual visit to repair the finances of
their son-in-law.

Monty Bell was driving, with Mrs. Jenks-Smith at his side. The robust
Lady of the Bluffs, evidently having some difficulty in keeping her
balance, was clutching the side bar desperately. She was dressed in
bright-figured hues from top to toe, her filmy hat had lurched over one
eye, and all together she looked like a Chinese lantern, or a balloon
inflated for its rise but entangled in its moorings.

Jenks-Smith sat behind, with Mrs. Latham and a very pretty young girl as
seatmates, while behind them came a giggling bevy of young people and the
grooms,--Sylvia being of course absent.

Mrs. Latham was clad in pale violet embroidered with iris in deeper
tones, her wide hat was irreproachably poised, her veil draped
gracefully, her white parasol, also embroidered with iris, held at as
becoming an angle, and her corsage violets as fresh as if she was but
starting out, while in fact the party must have driven up from New York
since morning.

They did not even glance at the gray horses which had been drawn aside to
give them right of way, much less acknowledge the courtesy, but clanked
by in a cloud of misty April dust.

"What a contrast between his mother and hers," I said unconsciously,
half aloud.

"Which? Whose? I did not quite catch the connection of that remark,"
said father, turning toward me with his quizzical expression, for a
standing joke of both father and Evan was to thus trip me up when I
uttered fragmentary sentences, as was frequently the case, taking it for
granted, they said, that they either dreamed the connection or could
read my thoughts.

"I meant what a great contrast there is between Mrs. Bradford and Mrs.
Latham," I explained, at once realizing that there was really no sense in
the comparison outside of my own irrepressibly romantic imagination, even
before father said:--

"And why, pray, should they not