"I know. Your man asked me. Awfully good of him."

"Why didn't you come, then?"

The inimitable Stanton ceased to be a snake, and, becoming erect,
touched his cap.

"Car's all right, my lord," he said.

"Oh, is it? Get in, then.--I didn't know if you wanted me to come,
Jeannie. I'm not sure if I wanted to either. But I expect the two are
one. It's funny, isn't it? Try me again."

"Well, come back with Victor and me after Bray," she said.

"Rather. It's Bray first, though. We shan't be late for dinner after
all. What a bore; I like being uniform and consistent. Look here, do
promise me a morning or an afternoon or something down there. Just half
a day alone with you."

She got into the car, he following.

"Yes, you dear," she said. "Of course you shall have it. A whole day if
you like, morning and afternoon."

"Jove! I'm on in that piece. Sure you won't be bored?"

"I'll try not."

"H'm. You think it will need an effort."

Jeannie laughed.

"Once upon a time a man went out fishing for compliments--" she began.

"And he didn't catch any," said Tom.

"Not one. And now we've chattered enough, and you shall tell me all
about yourself."

* * * * *

It was a very quiet and simple history that she heard, and all told it
amounted to the fact that he had settled down as he told her nearly a
year ago he was thinking of doing, but without marrying. There was
little to say, and in that little he was characteristically modest. For
the greater part of the year he had been down at his place in Wiltshire,
of which he had been so studiously absentee a landlord, and for the
first time had taken his place as a big landowner, and that which, with
rather a wry face, he alluded to as a "county magnate."

It was from other sources that Jeannie knew how modest this account was,
and at the end--

"Tom, you're a brick!" she said.

He laughed.

"Didn't know it," he said. "But the man who went fishing caught
something after all, in that case."

* * * * *

Daisy came into her aunt's room when the women went upstairs that
night for a talk. She was radiantly in love, but it was a different
Daisy from her who had made so many plans and known her own mind so
well a year ago.

"I know Willie has a cold," she said, "but men are so tiresome. They
won't take reasonable care of themselves. Don't you think he looked
rather run down, Aunt Jeannie?"

"Not the very s