s well go now. I suppose."

And John, accustomed to sudden orders, hurried off to get his horses
put to the carriage.

Lady Arthur, upon the whole, approved of railways, but did not use
them much except upon occasion; and it was only by taking the train
she could reach town and be home for dinner on this day.

They reached the station in time, and no more. Mr. Eildon ran and got
tickets, and John was ordered to be at the station nearest Garscube
Hall to meet them when they returned.

Embroidery, being an art which high-born dames have practiced from the
earliest ages, was an employment that had always found favor in the
sight of Lady Arthur, and to which she turned when she wanted change
of occupation. She took a very short time to select her materials, and
they were back and seated in the railway carriage fully ten minutes
before the train started. They beguiled the time by looking about the
station: it was rather a different scene from that where they had been
in the fore part of the day.

"There's surely a mistake," said Mr. Eildon, pointing to a large
picture hanging on the wall of three sewing-machines worked by three
ladies, the one in the middle being Queen Elizabeth in her ruff, the
one on the right Queen Victoria in her widow's cap: the princess
of Wales was very busy at the third. "Is not that what is called an
anachronism, Miss Adamson? Are not sewing-machines a recent invention?
There were none in Elizabeth's time, I think?"

"There are people," said Lady Arthur, "who have neither common sense
nor a sense of the ridiculous."

"But they have a sense of what will pay," answered her nephew. "That
appeals to the heart of the nation--that is, to the masculine heart.
If Queen Bess had been handling a lancet, and Queen Vic pounding in a
mortar with a pestle, assisted by her daughter-in-law, the case would
have been different; but they are at useful womanly work, and the
machines will sell. They have fixed themselves in our memories
already: that's the object the advertiser had when he pressed the
passion of loyalty into his service."

"How will the strong-minded Tudor lady like to see herself revived in
that fashion, if she can see it?" asked Miss Garscube.

"She'll like it well, judging by myself," said George: "that's true
fame. I should be content to sit cross-legged on a board, stitching
pulpit-robes, in a picture, if I were sure it would be hung up three
hundred years after this at all the balloon-s