ught me to ride
and drive. Having finally certificated me as competent to drive a pair
of horses under any circumstances, I ask how the children are, Sara in
particular. Here Croft looks heavenward, and says she looks a picture,
and adds that she looks very like me. The footman knows that here the
program is at an end, Croft having no greater praise to bestow on mortal
woman, and he opens the carriage door and I get in.

Diana knows what it is to travel t he distance of three miles in the
suffocating embraces of Hugh and Betty; otherwise she would probably
have sent the children to meet me.

The smell of the brougham brought my childhood vividly back to me. I
shut my eyes and instinctively put out my hand; and that hand that was
always held out to us as children took mine in its loving clasp, and I
was a child again, home from a visit, so glad to feel that hand again
and to see that mother from whom it was agony to be parted, for even a
short space of time.

Chapter III

When I arrived at Hames, Diana, tall, fair, and beautiful as a Diana
should be, was on the doorstep to meet me. Diana, by the way, had been
christened "Diana Elizabeth," in case she should have turned out short
and dumpy and, by some miraculous chance, dark. I looked for Sara in the
tail of Diana's gown,--I am afraid this is a literary license, as Diana
does not wear tails to her gowns in the country as a rule,--but Sara was
not there.

"She is not there," said Diana. "The children are in the wildest state
of excitement, and will you faithfully promise to go up and see them
directly you have had tea?"

I would willingly have gone then and there, and murmured something about
my box, and Diana said she hoped I had not brought them anything.

"Oh! nothing," I said; "only the smallest things possible"; knowing all
the time that the woolly rabbit was, of its kind, unrivaled. But these
are professional expenses, and what I spend does not afterwards give
me a moment's worry. I have seen David, on the other hand, speechlessly
miserable after buying a mezzotint, for the time being only, of course;
the joy cometh in the morning, when Diana proves to him that it was the
only thing to do, and that it was really quite wonderful, the way in
which he was led to buy it. He had had no idea of doing so. Not the
slightest! And yet something within him urged him to buy it. Absolutely
urged him!

Then, Diana said, it was clearly meant. If a man deliberatel