sy, '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 char