only a little, because you
are too good to hurt me, or any one. But I don't want to be 'any one' to
you, Mrs. Harold. Do let me be some one."

Now came again the ventriloquistic voice at the door, "phaeton's ready,
Miss Margaret."

"Why doesn't Mr. Winthrop drive out with Mrs. Rutherford?" said Garda,
watching Margaret put on her bonnet.

"He is probably occupied."

"He is never occupied. Do you call it occupied to be galloping over the
pine barrens in every direction, and stopping at East Angels? to be
exploring the King's Road, and stopping at East Angels? to be sailing up
and down the Espiritu, and stopping at East Angels? to be paddling up
all the creeks, and stopping at East Angels?"

"I should call that being very much occupied indeed," said Margaret,
smiling.

"I don't then," replied Garda; "that is, not in your sense of the word.
It's being occupied with his own pleasure--that's all. But the truth is
Mrs. Rutherford takes you, always you, because no one else begins to
make her so comfortable; you not only see that she has everything as she
likes it, but that she has nothing as she doesn't like it, which is even
more delightful. Yet apparently she doesn't realize this in the least; I
think that so very curious."

"Do you fancy that you understand Mrs. Rutherford on so short an
acquaintance?" asked Margaret, rather reprovingly.

"Yes," responded Garda, in her calm fashion, her attention, however, not
fixing itself long upon the subject, which she seemed to consider
unimportant. "I wish you would get a palmetto hat like mine," she went
on with much more interest; "your bonnet is lovely, but it makes you
seem old."

"But I _am_ old," said Margaret, as she left the room.

She did not apologize for leaving her guest; the young girl was in the
habit of bestowing her presence upon her so often now, that ceremony
between them had come to an end some time before. She took her place in
the phaeton, which was waiting at the foot of the outside stairway, Mrs.
Rutherford, enveloped in a rich shawl, having already been installed by
Celestine. Telano, in his Sunday jacket of black alpaca, held the bridle
of the mild old horse with great firmness. He had put on for the
occasion his broad-brimmed man-of-war hat, which was decorated with a
blue ribbon bearing in large gilt letters the inscription _Temeraire_.
Telano had no idea what _Temeraire_ meant (he called it Turmrer); he had
bought the hat of a travelling vender