r as composed as possible. The business that brought
us having been transacted, she opened fire on Cartmell about Oxley Lodge
and the outlying farms of Hingston. Verily she was losing no time in her
campaign!

Cartmell was obviously amused at her. "That's making up for lost time
with a vengeance, Miss Jenny! Hingston and Oxley all at once!" As soon
as they got on to business--got to work again--his old pride and
pleasure in her began to revive.

"Only a bit of Hingston!" Jenny pleaded with a smile.

"There's plenty of money," he said thoughtfully. "In spite of keeping
things going here as you ordered--much too lavishly done it was, too, in
my opinion--it's been piling up since you've been away. If they're
willing to sell--I hear on good authority that Bertram Ware is if he can
get his price--the money's not the difficulty. But what's the good?"

"The good?" asked Jenny.

"Surely you've got plenty? What's the good of a lot more? Isn't it only
a burden on you?"

She answered him not with her old impatience, but with all her
resoluteness--her old certainty that she knew what she wanted, and why
she wanted it--and that it was quite immaterial whether anyone else did.

"You look after the money, Mr. Cartmell; you can leave the good to
me--and the burden!"

"Yes, yes, you and your father!" he grumbled. "No good advising--not the
least! 'Slave-Driver' I used to call him over our port after dinner
sometimes. You're just the same, Miss Jenny."

"All that just because I want to buy a pretty house!" said Jenny,
appealing deprecatingly to me.

She would not go away without his promise to press both matters on.
Having extracted this, she went home--and ended her first day's campaign
by issuing an ukase that all the Driver workmen should, at an early
date, have a day's holiday on full wages, with a great feast for them,
their wives, children, and sweethearts in the grounds of
Breysgate--wages and feast alike to be provided out of the privy purse
of Miss Driver. Catsford was behaving well and was to be petted! Jenny
did not mention whether she intended to invite its chief spiritual
director.

I dined at the Priory that night--a night, on the whole, of distinct
triumph--and made acquaintance with Margaret Octon. Strange daughter of
such a father! Mrs. Octon must--one was inclined to speculate--have been
marvelously different from her husband--and from Jenny Driver.
Imagination began to picture something ineffably timid, s