n for
a sweetheart.

"She 's too big for you, my boy," said the general, laughing.

"The more the better," said he; "can't have too much of a good
wife."

I said little to him as we rode along. He asked for my address,
when I left him, and gave me the comforting assurance that he would
see me again. I made no answer, leaving him at a turn where, north
of us, I could see the white houses of Wrentham. Kingston was hard
by, its fort crowning a hill-top by the river.

It was past three by a tower clock at the gate of the Weirs when I
got there. A driveway through tall oaks led to the mansion of dark
stone. Many acres of park and field and garden were shut in with
high walls. I rang a bell at the small gate, and some fellow in
livery took my message.

"Wait 'ere, my lass," said he, with an English accent. "I 'll go
at once to the secretary."

I sat in a rustic chair by the gate-side, waiting for that
functionary.

"Ah, come in, come in," said he, coolly, as he opened the gate a
little.

He said nothing more, and I followed him--an oldish man with gray
eyes and hair and side-whiskers, and neatly dressed, his head
covered to the ears with a high hat, tilted backward. We took a
stone path, and soon entered a rear door.

"She may sit in the servants' hall," said he to one of the maids,

They took my shawl, as he went away, and showed me to a room where,
evidently, the servants did their eating. They were inquisitive,
those kitchen maids, and now and then I was rather put to it for a
wise reply. I said as little as might be, using the dialect, long
familiar to me, of the French Canadian. My bonnet amused them. It
was none too new or fashionable, and I did not remove it.

"Afraid we 'll steal it," I heard one of them whisper in the next
room. Then there was a loud laugh.

They gave me a French paper. I read every line of it, and sat
looking out of a window at the tall trees, at servants who passed
to and fro, at his Lordship's horses, led up and down for exercise
in the stable-yard, at the twilight glooming the last pictures of a
long day until they were all smudged with darkness. Then
candle-light, a trying supper hour with maids and cooks and grooms
and footmen at the big table, English, every one of them, and set
up with haughty curiosity. I would not go to the table, and had a
cup of tea and a biscuit there in my corner. A big butler walked
in hurriedly awhile after seven. He looked down at