Disasters of the present kind could hardly affect such a veteran.  But he was painfully disconcerted by Redworth’s determination not to entrust the ladies any farther to his guidance.  Danvers had implored for permission to walk the mile to the town, and thence take a fly to Copsley.  Her mistress rather sided with the postillion; who begged them to spare him the disgrace of riding in and delivering a box at the Red Lion.

‘What’ll they say?  And they know Arthur Dance well there,’ he groaned.  ‘What!  Arthur! chariotin’ a box!  And me a better man to his work now than I been for many a long season, fit for double the journey!  A bit of a shake always braces me up.  I could read a newspaper right off, small print and all.  Come along, sir, and hand the ladies in.’

Danvers vowed her thanks to Mr. Redworth for refusing.  They walked ahead; the postillion communicated his mixture of professional and human feelings to the waggoners, and walked his horses in the rear, meditating on the weak-heartedness of gentryfolk, and the means for escaping being chaffed out of his boots at the Old Red Lion, where he was to eat, drink, and sleep that night.  Ladies might be fearsome after a bit of a shake; he would not have supposed it of a gentleman.  He jogged himself into an arithmetic of the number of nips of liquor he had taken to soothe him on the road, in spite of the gentleman.  ’For some of ’em are sworn enemies of poor men, as yonder one, ne’er a doubt.’

Diana enjoyed her walk beneath the lingering brown-red of the frosty November sunset, with the scent of sand-earth strong in the air.

‘I had to hire a chariot because there was no two-horse carriage,’ said Redworth, ‘and I wished to reach Copsley as early as possible.’

She replied, smiling, that accidents were fated.  As a certain marriage had been!  The comparison forced itself on her reflections.

‘But this is quite an adventure,’ said she, reanimated by the brisker flow of her blood.  ’We ought really to be thankful for it, in days when nothing happens.’

Redworth accused her of getting that idea from the perusal of romances.

’Yes, our lives require compression, like romances, to be interesting, and we object to the process,’ she said.  ’Real happiness is a state of dulness.  When we taste it consciously it becomes mortal—­a thing of the Seasons.  But I like my walk.  How long these November sunsets burn, and what hues they have!  There is a scientific reason, only don’t tell it me.  Now I understand why you always used to choose your holidays in November.’

She thrilled him with her friendly recollection of his customs.

‘As to happiness, the looking forward is happiness,’ he remarked.

‘Oh, the looking back! back!’ she cried.

‘Forward! that is life.’

’And backward, death, if you will; and still at is happiness.  Death, and our postillion!’

‘Ay; I wonder why the fellow hangs to the rear,’ said Redworth, turning about.