“Bring forth the steed,” commanded Mr. Mortimer.  “Nay, I will accompany you to the stables and fetch him.”

“And the saucepan!  Don’t forget the saucepan!” Mrs. Mortimer called after them in a sprightly voice as they crossed the yard together.

“Ha, the saucepan!” Within the stable doorway Mr. Mortimer stood still and pressed a hand to his brow.  “You cannot think, my dear Smiles, how that obligation weighs on me.  The expense of a saucepan—­what is it?  And yet—­” He seemed to ponder.  Of a sudden his brow cleared. “—­Unless, to be sure—­that is to say, if you should happen to have a shilling about you?”

“I got no change but ’arf-a-crown, if that’s any use,” answered the charmed Sam.

“Nothing smaller?  Still,” suggested Mr. Mortimer quickly, “I could bring back the change.”

“Yes, do.”

“It will please Arabella, too.  In point of fact, during the whole of our married life I have made it a rule never to absent myself from her side without bringing back some trifling gift.  Women—­as you will understand one of these days—­set a value on these petits soins; and somewhere in the neighbourhood of the iron bridge a tinsmith’s should not be hard to find . . .  Ah, thanks, my dear fellow—­thanks inexpressibly!  Absurd of me, of course; but you cannot think what a load you have taken off my mind.”

Sam unhitched one of a number of hauling tackles hanging against the wall, and led forth his horse—­a sturdy old grey, by name Jubilee.  Casting the tackle carelessly on the animal’s back, he handed Mr. Mortimer the headstall rope, and left him, to return two minutes later with the saucepan he had promised.

“She must use this one for the time,” he explained.  “And afterwards yours will come as a surprise.”

“It must be so, I suppose,” assented Mr. Mortimer, but after a pause, and reluctantly, averting his eyes from the accursed thing.

To spare him, Sam hurried across to deliver it to the lady, who awaited them in the doorway:  and thus approaching he became aware that she was making mysterious signals.  He glanced behind him.  Plainly the signals were not directed at her husband, who had halted to stoop and pass a hand over old Jubilee’s near hind pastern, and in a manner almost more than professional.  Sam advanced, in some wonder.  Mrs. Mortimer reached down a shapely hand for the pan-handle, leaned as she did so, and murmured—­

“You will not lend money to Stanislas?  He is apt, when the world goes ill with him, to seek distraction, to behave unconventionally.  It is not a question of drowning his cares, for the least little drop acting upon his artistic temperament—­”

But at this moment her husband, having concluded his inspection of the grey, called out to be given a leg-up, and Sam hurried back to oblige.

“Thank you.  Time was, Smiles, when with hand laid lightly on the crupper, I could have vaulted.”