nd
attend to your knitting, I've seen harness before, you know."

"I'm not sure as you've ever handled a gentleman's harness in your life,
'Zekiel Forbes."

"It's a fact they don't wear 'em much down Boston way."

His mother regarded his shock of light hair with repressed fondness.

"It was a big responsibility I took when I asked Mr. Evringham to let
you try the place," she said solemnly, "and I'm going to do my best to
help you fill it. It does seem almost a providence the way Fanshaw's
livery fits you; and if you'll hold yourself up, I may be partial, but
it seems to me you look better in it than he ever did; and I'm sure if
handsome is as handsome does, you'll fill it better every way, even if
he _was_ a fashionable English coachman. Mrs. Evringham was so pleased
with his style she tried to have him kept even after he'd taken too much
for the second time; but Mr. Evringham valued his horses too highly for
that, I can tell you."

"Thought the governor was a widower still," remarked Ezekiel as his
mother drew forward a battered chair and dusted it with the huge apron
that covered her neat dress. She seated herself close to her boy.

"Of course he is," she returned with some asperity. "Why should he get
married with such a home as he's got? Fifteen years I've kept house for
Mr. Evringham. I don't believe but what he'd say that in all that time
he's never found his beef overdone or a button off his shirts."

"Humph!" grunted Ezekiel. "He looks as if he wouldn't mind hanging you
to the nearest tree if he did. I heard tell once that there was a cold
hell as well as a hot one. Think says I, when the governor was looking
me over the other day, 'You've set sail for the cold place, old boy.'"

"Zeke Forbes, don't you ever let me hear you say such a thing again!"
exclaimed Mrs. Forbes. "Mr. Evringham is the finest gentleman within one
hundred miles of New York city. When a man has spent his life in Wall
Street it's bound to show some in his face, of course; but what comfort
has that man ever known?"

"Pretty scrumptious place he's got here in this park, I notice,"
returned the new coachman.

"Yes, he has a breath of fresh air before he goes to the city and after
he gets back every day. Isn't that Essex Maid of his a beauty?" Mrs.
Forbes cast her eyes towards the stalls where the shining flanks of two
horses were visible from her seat by the wide-open doors of the barn.
"His rides back there among the hills,"--Mrs. F