eated Lady Gridborough; her hat
was on one side, her face was flushed, her mantle dusty and disarranged;
but her good-natured face was wreathed in smiles as she watched a young
man, standing beside the Exmoor pony and attempting to keep it from
rearing and plunging.

"Oh, whatever is the matter?" demanded Celia, as she ran forward.

Lady Gridborough looked up, laughed, and wiped her eyes.

"Good morning, my dear," she said; "you've come just in time to enjoy a
little comedy." She nodded at the young man and the frisking pony. "Turk
took it into his head to bolt just now, coming down the hill there. I
suppose it was only his fun, but we ran up on to the path, the cart
overturned----"

"Oh! Are you hurt?" demanded Celia, anxiously.

"Not a bit," replied Lady Gridborough; "but I might have been, for I was
mixed up with the cart in some extraordinary fashion. I don't know what
might have happened if it hadn't been for that young man there. He
appeared on the scene as if he had dropped from the clouds; he
disentangled me somehow, set the cart up again, and is now trying to
persuade that fool of a pony that this isn't a circus."

At the sound of Celia's voice, the young man had turned his head and
uttered an exclamation, and now that Celia saw his face, she, too,
uttered a cry of astonishment; for she recognized Mr. Reginald Rex, the
young man of the British Museum.

She sprang up and went to him with a hand extended; he grasped it, and
they stared at each other for a moment in astonished silence; then Celia
burst into laughter.

"Why, how ridiculous!" she said. "To think of meeting you here, and in
this way!"

"It's--incredible!" he retorted. "What are you doing here?"

"I may ask you the same question," said Celia.

"I'll tell you directly," he replied, "as soon as I've persuaded this
pony that we've finished the trick act."

"Celia!" called Lady Gridborough from the bank. "Come here at once. What
does this mean? Do you know that young man? You greet each other as if
you were life-long friends!"

"Well, we're not quite that," said Celia, laughing. "We've met at the
British Museum. He is a novelist."

For an instant Lady Gridborough looked slightly disappointed; but it was
for an instant only.

"Well, he's a plucky young man all the same, my dear," she said. "He
really did show great presence of mind, and has been awfully nice
throughout the whole business. Fancy your meeting here in this way! What
is his