interest in such plebeians. She,
seeing that I was silent, leaned back too, each small hand gripping an
arm of that throne-like chair.

"Well?" she said; and when still I was silent she repeated more
insistently: "Well, David?" Then raising her voice a little to a tone
of command: "I asked you who drives the stage."

I forgot the carved chair and Reynolds's majestic lady. I forgot the
imposing fireplace and the old gentleman in wig and smallclothes. I
laughed with the sheer joy of being with Penelope again. I forgot even
the great divan and made a futile effort to jump it nearer her in my
burst of enthusiasm for our new-born friendship.

"Why, Joe Hicks," I said. "You remember Joe Hicks, Penelope?"

"Joe Hicks," she said, pronouncing the name as though it were that of
some dear friend suddenly dragged out of the by-gone years. "Surely
not the same Joe Hicks who used to let us ride with him sometimes from
Malcolmville out to the farm?"

"The same Joe Hicks," said I, and with a strange disregard for forms
and effects I gave way to a natural desire of hunger and dived at the
curate's delight, forgetting entirely the crumb-begetting habits of
cake. "Try one of those," I went on, indicating the topmost plate, and
to my delight she helped herself, almost with avidity. "You remember,
Penelope, how we used to loiter near the kitchen when we smelled cake
in the oven?"

Then Penelope laughed as though in the sheer joy of casting years away
and living over her childhood.

"Indeed I do," she returned. "But we were speaking of Joe Hicks. You
surprised me. He was an old man when we knew him."

"He was seventy then. He is still seventy," I returned.
"Stage-driving, you know, is conducive----"

"I used to think I'd like to be a stage-driver when I grew up," she
interrupted. "You would see so much of the world with so little
trouble, just holding the reins as the horses ambled along. How our
ideas change, David!"

It was on the old and unchanged ideas that I wanted to dwell. The new
would bring me back all too quickly to ancestral portraits, to imposing
fireplaces and costly bear-skin rugs. I assented readily to her
self-evident proposition and brushed it aside for the most interesting
matter of Joseph Hicks.

"You used to love to drive," I said. "I can see you now wheedling Joe
into letting you have the reins. Don't you remember his telling you
that no self-respecting woman was ever seen driving more th