and embroider very nicely. Someone told me
that as long as there's any hope they wear stout boots and walk about and
hunt, but as soon as it's hopeless they take to embroidering."

"It must be rather a blue day for them when they decide definitely to make
the change," said Jack.

"I never thought of that," said Mrs. Rosscott soberly. "Of course it must!
I was always very good to them. I gave them ever so many things that I
could have used longer myself, and they used to set pieces of muslin in
behind the open-work places and wear them."

She sighed.

"It's quite as bad as being a Girton girl," she said. "Do you know what a
Girton girl is?"

"No, I don't."

"It's a girl from Girton College. It's the most awful freak you ever saw.
They're really quite beyond everything. They're so homely, and their hands
and feet are so enormous, and their pins never pin, and their belts never
belt. And no one has ever married one of them yet!"

She paused dramatically.

"I won't either, then," he declared.

She laughed at that, and touched up the cob a trifle.

"Did you live long in England?" he asked.

"Forever!" she answered with emphasis; "at least it seemed like forever.
Mamma left me there when I was nineteen (she married me off before she
left me, of course) and I stayed there until last winter--until I was out
of my mourning, you know--and then I was on the Continent for a while, and
then I returned to papa."

"How do we strike you after your long absence?"

"Oh, you suit me admirably," she said, turning and smiling squarely into
his face; "only the terrible 'and' of the majority does get on my nerves
somewhat."

"What 'and'?"

"Haven't you noticed? Why when an American runs out of talking material he
just rests on one poor little 'and' until a fresh run of thought
overwhelms him; you listen to the next person you're talking with, and
you'll hear what I mean."

Jack reflected.

"I will," he said at last.

The road went sweeping in and out among a thicket of bare tree trunks and
brown copses, and the sunlight fell out of the blue sky above straight
down upon their heads.

"If it don't annoy you, my referring to England so often," said she
presently, "I will state that this reminds me of Kaysmere, the country
place of my father-in-law."

"Is your father-in-law living yet?"

"Dear me, yes--and still has hold of the title that I supposed I was
getting when I was married to his eldest son. My father-in-law