The young people’s voices, chiming harmoniously, sounded in Mrs. Moxon’s room.  The poor suffering lady, who was extended on an inclined couch below the window, looked down at them, and saw Harry standing at Miss Hoyden’s head, with docile Brownie’s bridle on his left arm, and Bessie, with the fine end of her slender whip, teasing the dark fuzz of his hair.  They made a pretty picture at the gate, laughing and chattering their confidences aloud.

“What did Harry Musgrave say to your news, Bessie?” her father asked as they rode away from the vicar’s house.

“I forgot to tell him!” cried she, pulling up and half turning round.  “I had so much to hear.”  But Mr. Carnegie said it was not worth while to bring Harry out again from his books.  How fevered the lad looked!  Why did not Moxon patronize open windows?

The road they were pursuing was a gradual long ascent, which brought them in sight of the sea and of a vast expanse of rolling heath and woodland.  When they reached the top of the hill they breathed their horses a few minutes and admired the view, then struck into a bridle-track across the heath, and regained the high-road about a mile from Beechhurst.  Scudding along in front of them was the familiar figure of Miss Wort in her work-a-day costume—­a drab cloak and poke bonnet, her back up, and limp petticoats dragging in the dust.  She turned swiftly in at the neat garden-gate that had a green space before it, where numerous boles of trees, lopt of their branches, lay about in picturesque confusion.  A wheelwright’s shed and yard adjoined the cottage, and Mr. Carnegie, halting without dismounting, whistled loud and shrill to call attention.  A wiry, gray-headed man appeared from the shed, and came forward with a rueful, humorous twinkle in his shrewd blue eyes.

“Done again, Mr. Carnegie!” said he.  “The old woman’s done you again.  It is no good denying her physic, for physic she will have.  She went to Hampton Infirmary last Saturday with a ticket from Miss Wort, and brought home two bottles o’ new mixture.  So you see, sir, between ’em, you’re frustrated once more.”

“I am not surprised.  Drugging is as bad a habit as drinking, and as hard to leave off.  Miss Wort has just gone in to your wife, so I will not intrude.  What is your son doing at present, Christie?”

“He’s about somewhere idling with his drawing-book and bits o’ colors.  He takes himself off whenever it is a finer day than common.  Most likely he’s gone to Great-Ash Ford.  He’s met with a mate there after his own mind—­an artist chap.  Was you wanting him, Mr. Carnegie?”

“There is a job of painting to do at my stable, but it can wait.  Only tell him, and he will suit his convenience.”