to see over it very much, if your father would ask me."

"Oh, he will--he'll be delighted. I say, come this week--while we're by
ourselves?"

"Yes, if he invites me."

"He'll invite you. He likes you very much--only he's not exactly
expansive, you know, the governor!"

"Never mind, you are. Now Mr. Austin and I must go back to breakfast and
to work."

"By Jove, I must be getting back, too, or I shall keep the governor
waiting, and he doesn't like that."

"If you do, tell him it's my fault."

The boy looked at her, then at me, again blushed a little, and laughed.
The slightest flush appeared on Jenny's smiling face. I took the
opportunity to light a cigarette. The morning races had not been talked
about at Fillingford!

"Well no--you mustn't put it on the woman, must you?" said Jenny, as she
waved a laughing farewell.

On our way home she was silent and thoughtful, speaking only now and
then and answering one or two remarks of mine rather absently. One
observation threw some light on her thoughts.

"It's very awkward that Mr. Octon should make himself so unpopular. I
want to be friends with everybody, but--" She broke off. I did no more
than give a nod of assent. But I knew--and thought she must--how Octon
stood. He was considered to have made himself impossible. He was not
asked to Fillingford; Aspenick had bluntly declared that he would not
meet him on account of a rude speech of Octon's, leveled at Lady
Aspenick; Bertram Ware and he were at daggers drawn over some
semipolitical semiprivate squabble in which Octon's language had been of
more than its usual violence. The town loved him no better than the
county. Jenny wanted to be popular everywhere--popular, influential,
acclaimed. She was weighted by this unpopular friendship--which yet had
such attraction for her. The cares of state had fastened on her again as
we jogged homeward.

Well, they were the joy of her life--it would have needed a dull man not
soon to see that. The real joy, I mean--not what at that moment--nay,
nor perhaps at any moment--she would herself have named as her delight.
Her joy in the sense in which we creatures--and the wisest among us long
ago--come nearest to being able to understand and define the innermost
engine or instinct whose working is most truly ourselves--the temptation
to live and life itself which pair nature has so cunningly coupled
together. Effective activity--the reaching out to make of external
things and peo