“Please, I am to sit up in front with you, ain’t I, Tom?” Patience urged.  “You and I always get on so beautifully together, you know.”

Tom relaxed a second time.  “I don’t see how I can refuse after that,” and the over-hauling process being completed, Patience climbed up to the high front seat, where she beamed down on the rest with such a look of joyful content that they could only smile back in response.

From the doorway, came a warning voice.  “Not too far, Tom, for Hilary; and remember, Patience, what you have promised me.”

“All right, Mrs. Shaw,” Tom assured her, and Patience nodded her head assentingly.

From the parsonage, they went first to the doctor’s.  Josie was waiting for them at the gate, and as they drew up before it, with horn blowing, and horses almost prancing—­the proprietor of the hotel had given them his best horses, in honor of the Folly—­she stared from her brother to the stage, with its white placard, with much the same look of wonder in her eyes as Pauline and Hilary had shown.

“Miss Brice?” Tom was consulting his list again.

“So that’s what you’ve been concocting, Tom Brice!” Josie answered.

Tom’s face was as sober as his manner.  “I am afraid we are a little behind scheduled time, being unavoidably delayed.”

“He means they had to wait for me to get ready,” Patience explained.  “You didn’t expect to see me along, did you, Josie?” And she smiled blandly.

“I don’t know what I did expect—­certainly, not this.”  Josie took her place in the stage, not altogether sure whether the etiquette of the occasion allowed of her recognizing its other inmates, or not.

But Pauline nodded politely.  “Good afternoon.  Lovely day, isn’t it?” she remarked, while Shirley asked, if she had ever made this trip before.

“Not in this way,” Josie answered.  “I’ve never ridden in the Folly before.  Have you, Paul?”

“Once, from the depot to the hotel, when I was a youngster, about Impatience’s age.  You remember, Hilary?”

“Of course I do.  Uncle Jerry took me up in front.”  Uncle Jerry was the name the owner of the stage went by in Winton.  “He’d had a lot of Boston people up, and had been showing them around.”

“This reminds me of the time father and I did our own New York in one of those big ‘Seeing New York’ motors,” Shirley said.  “I came home feeling almost as if we’d been making a trip ’round some foreign city.”

“Tom can’t make Winton seem foreign,” Josie declared.

There were three more houses to stop at, lower down the street.  From windows and porches all along the route, laughing, curious faces stared wonderingly after them, while a small body-guard of children sprang up as if by magic to attend them on their way.  This added greatly to the delight of Patience, who smiled condescendingly down upon various intimates, blissfully conscious of the envy she was exciting in their breasts.  It was delightful to be one of the club for a time, at least.