Lord Newhaven, who was being watched with affectionate interest from behind the counter by the grocer postmaster, went in, hit his head against a pendent ham, and presently emerged with brine in his hair and a shilling’s worth of stamps in his hand.

Later in the day, when he and Dick were riding up the little street, with a view to having a look at the moor—­for Middleshire actually has a grouse moor, although it is in the Midlands—­the grocer in his white apron rushed out and waylaid them.

“Very sorry about the letter, my lord,” he repeated volubly, touching his forelock.  “Hope her la’ship told you as I could not get it out again, or I’m sure I would have done to oblige your lordship, and her la’ship calling on purpose.  But the post-office is that mean and distrustful as it don’t leave me the key, and once hanything is in, in it is.”

“Ah!” said Lord Newhaven, slowly.  “Well, Jones, it’s not your fault.  I ought not to have changed my mind.  I suppose her ladyship gave you my message that I wanted it back?”

“Yes, my lord, and her la’ship come herself, not ten minutes after you was gone.  But I’ve no more power over that there receptacle than a hunlaid hegg, and that’s the long and short of it.  I’ve allus said, and I say it again, ’Them as have charge of the post-office should have the key.’”

“When I am made postmaster-general you shall have it,” said Lord Newhaven, smiling.  “It is the first reform that I shall bring about.”  And he nodded to the smiling, apologetic man and trotted on, Dick beside him, who was apparently absorbed in the action of his roan cob.

But Dick’s mind had sustained a severe shock.  That Lady Newhaven, “that jolly little woman,” the fond mother of those two “jolly little chaps,” should have been guilty of an underhand trick, was astonishing to him.

Poor Dick had started life with a religious reverence for woman; had carried out his brittle possession to bush-life in Australia, from thence through two A.D.C.-ships, and, after many vicissitudes, had brought it safely back with a large consignment of his own Burgundy to his native land.  It was still sufficiently intact—­save for a chip or two—­to make a pretty wedding-present to his future wife.  But it had had a knock since he mounted the roan cob.  For, unfortunately, the kind of man who has what are called “illusions” about women is too often the man whose discrimination lies in other directions, in fields where little high-heeled shoes are not admitted.

Rachel had the doubtful advantage of knowing that, in spite of Dick’s shrewdness respecting shades of difference in muscatels, she and Lady Newhaven were nevertheless ranged on the same pedestal in Dick’s mind as flawless twins of equal moral beauty.  But after this particular day she observed that Lady Newhaven had somehow slipped off the pedestal, and that she, Rachel, had the honor of occupying it alone.