end them up to Tattersall's immediately, with the
carriage."

"Violet uses the carriage with Titmouse." objected Mrs. Winstanley. "We
could hardly spare the carriage."

"My love, if I part with your ponies from motives of economy, do you
suppose I would keep a pony for your daughter?" said the Captain with a
grand air. "No; Titmouse must go, of course. That will dispose of a man
and a boy in the stables. Violet spends so much of her life on
horseback, that she cannot possibly want a pony to drive."

"She is very fond of Titmouse," pleaded the mother.

"She has a tendency to lavish her affection on quadrupeds--a weakness
which hardly needs fostering. I shall write to Tattersall about the
three ponies this morning; and I shall send up that great raking brown
horse Bates rides at the same time. Bates can ride one of my hunters.
That will bring down the stable to five horses--my two hunters, Arion,
and your pair of carriage-horses."

"Five horses," sighed Mrs. Winstanley pensively; "I shall hardly know
those great stables with only five horses in them. The dear old place
used to look so pretty and so full of life when I was first married,
and when the Squire used to coax me to go with him on his morning
rounds. The horses used to move on one side, and turn their heads so
prettily at the sound of his voice--such lovely, sleek, shining
creatures, with big intelligent eyes."

"You would be a richer woman if it had not been for those lovely,
sleek, shining creatures," said Captain Winstanley. "And now, love, let
us go round the gardens, and you will see the difference that young
able-bodied gardeners are making in the appearance of the place."

Mrs. Winstanley gave a plaintive little sigh as she rose and rang the
bell for Pauline. The good old gray-haired gardeners--the men who had
seemed to her as much a part of the gardens as the trees that grew in
them--these hoary and faithful servants had been cashiered, to make
room for two brawny young Scotchmen, whose dialect was as Greek to the
mistress of the Abbey House. It wounded her not a little to see these
strangers at work in her grounds. It gave an aspect of strangeness to
her very life out of doors. She hardly cared to go into her
conservatories, or to loiter on her lawn, with those hard unfamiliar
eyes looking at her. And it wrung her heart to think of the Squire's
old servants thrust out in their old age, unpensioned, uncared for. Yet
this was a change that had come