‘Not yet, sir.  Neither of us can.  We are going to find out.’

‘Well, what’s the advantage of it?’

’I brought it up, sir, in the hope and persuasion that it would undertake the clothing of all the poor people at Crocus, and give Rosy time to read philosophy.’

‘Why papa,’ said Rosy, ’it will do fifteen hundred stitches a minute!’

’You don’t want to do more than that in a day, do you, my dear?’ said the doctor, with an expression of such innocent amazement, not without some dismay, that they all burst out laughing; and Dr. Maryland but half enlightened, went off to his study.

Much before Primrose wished it, the horses came to the door.  Rollo had had his own saddle put upon Vixen, and the grey cob stood charged with the paraphernalia which should accompany the mistress of Chickaree.  She had gone up to prepare for her ride, and now came to the front in habit and gauntlets and whip, the rose branch at her button-hole.

‘O,’ she said in tones so like a bird that the groom might have been pardoned for looking up into the maple boughs over his head to find her; ’you have made a mistake!  The other horse is the one I ride.  Will you change the saddles, please?—­ I am sorry to give you the trouble!’

The groom would have been in great bewilderment, but that luckily his master stood there too.  The man’s look of appeal was comical, going from one to another.  Rollo was looking at girths and buckles, and did not seem to hear.  Wych Hazel waited—­a slight growing doubt on the subject of his deafness not increasing the pliability of her mood.  Then he came towards her, and asked if she was ready?

‘I am—­but my horse is not.’

‘What is the matter with him?’

’I am very sorry to make any delay, Mr. Rollo, but the saddles will have to be changed.  I can’t ride that grey horse!’ And she slipped her hat back and sat down on the doorstep, to await the process.

‘There is no mistake,’ said Rollo.  ’The horses were saddled by my order.  I told him to give you the grey.  You will forgive me, I hope!’

‘Without asking me!’ she said, giving him a rather wide-open look of her eyes, and then in a tone as cool as his own—­

‘I shall ride Vixen, Mr. Rollo, if I ride at all.’

‘I hope you will reconsider that.’

‘Mr. Rollo,’ she said in her gravest manner, ’you and I seem fated to see something of each other—­so it will save trouble for you to know at once, that when I say a thing seriously, I mean it.’

He lifted his hat with the old stately air.  But then he smiled at her.

’Allow me to believe that you have said nothing seriously this morning?’

Now if Wych Hazel’s mood was not pliable, his was the sort of look to make it so.  A calmly good-humoured brow, with a clear keen eye, and in both all that character of firm strength to which a woman’s temper is apt to give way.  If it had been a question of temper in the ordinary sense.  But the lady of Chickaree had nothing of the sort belonging to her that was not as sweet as a rose.