“I think he changed his mind when he heard Miss Kendal was going with papa,” said Cecil.

“I believe we are all here,” said Colonel Rolleston, who was to lead the procession, coming out with the great lady of the party, an eccentric dowager peeress, who having “tired her wing” with flying through the States, was now perching awhile before re-crossing the Herring-pond.  Miss Kendal and a subaltern, pressed into the service, placed themselves in the back seat, well smothered in wolf-skins, and the first sleigh moved off to the admiration of the school-room party at the window, who, with the partiality of childhood, thought their papa’s the most beautiful turn-out in the city.

“Mr. Vavasour’s horse is up the bank,” screamed Fleda.  “How much better papa drives; he went off so quickly and quietly.  I wouldn’t be Bluebell!  Mr. Vavasour can hardly get out at the gate.”

“If papa had to drive one horse before another, perhaps he couldn’t either,” said Lola, who had been watching with great interest the erratic course of Jack’s leader.

Twenty sleighs were off in a string, the crowd cheering them to the echo as they dashed through Queen’s Park; but on gaining Carleton Street they were obliged carefully to keep the track, as the sides of the road were deep and treacherous.

“The Colonel is making the pace very slow,” remarked Mr. Vavasour; “like to drive, Miss Leigh? they are going very smoothly.”

Bluebell, whose knowledge of horses was about equal to her opportunities of instruction, unhesitatingly assented.  Jack’s gratification thereat was somewhat tempered, when he saw the bewilderment apparent in his flighty pair at the very original manner in which she handled her “lines.”

“I suppose,” said that young lady, with the composure of ignorance, “we are all right as long as this bald-face horse keeps its nose pointing at Captain Delamere’s back.”

“Quite so,” said Jack, cheerily; “don’t take the whip, you are only winding it round your own neck.  I’ll give Dahlia a lick in the face if she turns out of the rank.”

They were winding down a hill, and took a road at the bottom at right angles to it.  Colonel Rolleston, in the first sleigh, was blandly pointing out to Lady Hampshire the coup d’oeil of the whole procession as they described two sides of a triangle.

“Do you like my plumes?” asked Jack, relaxing his surveillance on Dahlia, as her left ear, which had been laid back in a suggestive manner, resumed its accustomed position.

“Like them,” echoed Bluebell; “it’s just like a hearse, bar the colour, which is frightful.  I wouldn’t have come if I had known I was to be driven in such a fire-engine.”

“There now,” rather crest-fallen.  “I chose them because you said you were fond of scarlet, otherwise I should have preferred blue, except that I might have been taken for one of the 10th, who mount their regimental colours on everything.”