Mrs. Mountstuart was on the step of her carriage when the silken parasols of the young ladies were descried on a slope of the park, where the yellow green of May-clothed beeches flowed over the brown ground of last year’s leaves.

“Who’s the cavalier?” she inquired.

A gentleman escorted them.

“Vernon?  No! he’s pegging at Crossjay,” quoth Willoughby.

Vernon and Crossjay came out for the boy’s half-hour’s run before his dinner.  Crossjay spied Miss Middleton and was off to meet her at a bound.  Vernon followed him leisurely.

“The rogue has no cousin, has she?” said Mrs. Mountstuart.

“It’s a family of one son or one daughter for generations,” replied Willoughby.

“And Letty Dale?”

“Cousin!” he exclaimed, as if wealth had been imputed to Miss Dale; adding:  “No male cousin.”

A railway station fly drove out of the avenue on the circle to the hall-entrance.  Flitch was driver.  He had no right to be there, he was doing wrong, but he was doing it under cover of an office, to support his wife and young ones, and his deprecating touches of the hat spoke of these apologies to his former master with dog-like pathos.

Sir Willoughby beckoned to him to approach.

“So you are here,” he said.  “You have luggage.”

Flitch jumped from the box and read one of the labels aloud:  “Lieutenant-Colonel H. De Craye.”

“And the colonel met the ladies?  Overtook them?”

Here seemed to come dismal matter for Flitch to relate.

He began upon the abstract origin of it:  he had lost his place in Sir Willoughby’s establishment, and was obliged to look about for work where it was to be got, and though he knew he had no right to be where he was, he hoped to be forgiven because of the mouths he had to feed as a flyman attached to the railway station, where this gentleman, the colonel, hired him, and he believed Sir Willoughby would excuse him for driving a friend, which the colonel was, he recollected well, and the colonel recollected him, and he said, not noticing how he was rigged:  “What!  Flitch! back in your old place?  Am I expected?” and he told the colonel his unfortunate situation.  “Not back, colonel; no such luck for me” and Colonel De Craye was a very kind-hearted gentleman, as he always had been, and asked kindly after his family.  And it might be that such poor work as he was doing now he might be deprived of, such is misfortune when it once harpoons a man; you may dive, and you may fly, but it sticks in you, once do a foolish thing.  “May I humbly beg of you, if you’ll be so good, Sir Willoughby,” said Flitch, passing to evidence of the sad mishap.  He opened the door of the fly, displaying fragments of broken porcelain.

“But, what, what! what’s the story of this?” cried Sir Willoughby.

“What is it?” said Mrs. Mountstuart, pricking up her ears.

“It was a vaws,” Flitch replied in elegy.