porter. "If my lady be a maid, she
must pay me one of her garters as her admission fee to this inn. If she
be madam, she enters free. It is a privilege conferred on the Maid's
Garter by good St. Augustine when he was Bishop of Canterbury, so long
ago that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary."

"What nonsense is this?" asked Frances, turning to me, and Bettina asked
the same question with her eyes. I explained the matter, and Frances,
turning to the porter, said:--

"I'll buy you off with a jacobus or a guinea."

"Not a hundred guineas would buy me off, my lady," answered the porter,
bowing, "though I might say that a shilling usually goes with the
garter."

"Well, I'll send you both the shilling and the garter from my room," said
Frances, moving toward the inn door.

"The garter must be paid here, my lady. The shilling may be paid at any
time," returned the porter, with polite insistence.

Frances was about to protest, but Betty, more in sympathy with the
eccentric customs of inns, modestly lifted her skirts, untied her garter
and offered it to the porter, telling him very seriously:--

"I am a maid."

The porter thanked her gravely, whereupon Frances, turning her back on
the audience in the doorway, brought forth her garter, gave it to the
porter, and we were admitted.

Our supper, beds, and breakfast were all so good that they reconciled
Frances and Bettina to the payment of the extraordinary admission fee,
and when we left the next morning, curiosity prompted them to pass near
the garter rack in the tap-room, where garters were hanging which had
been taken from maids whose great granddaughters had become great
grandmothers. The garters that had belonged to Frances and Bettina, being
the latest contributions, hung at the bottom of the rack, neatly dated
and labelled, and, as I left the room, I overheard Bettina whisper to
Frances:--

"I'm glad mine was of silk."

We made a short drive to Maidstone, where we stopped over night. The next
day a longer journey brought us to Canterbury, where we spent two nights
and a day, visiting the cathedral both by sunlight and moonlight; the
combination of moonlight and Bettina being very trying to me.

From Canterbury we drove in the rain to Dover, where we lodged at that
good inn, the Three Anchors, to await a fair wind for Calais.

During the next three days the wind was fair, but it was blowing half a
gale, and therefore the passage was not to be attemp