am Westaway?"

"Well, most of us was rather sorry for him. He'd took a lot of trouble to
queer Spider's pitch and put up a mighty clever fight for Jenny, you see.
But the woman liked her little black beetle best. In fact she adores him
to this day. Billy married a very fine girl from Princetown. But I reckon
he never felt so properly in love with her as what he did with Mrs.
White."

No. XIV

THE WOODSTACK

As butler at Oakshotts I was a busy man no doubt, with a mighty good
master who knew he'd got a treasure. Because wine and tobacco be second
nature to me, and though very sparing in the use of both, I have great
natural gifts and a sort of steadfast and unfailing judgment for the best.
And as master be fond of saying in his amusing way, the best is always
good enough for him, so Sir Walter Oakshott of Oakshotts trusted in me,
with great credit to himself and applause from his guests. Never was such
an open-handed man, and being a widower at fifty, with no mind just then
to try again, he let his sociable instincts run over for his friends, and
Oakshotts, as I sometimes said, was more like an hotel than a country
house. For he had his gardening pals come to see his amazing foreign
rhododendrons in spring, and his fishermen pals for his lakes and
river-banks in summer; while so soon as September came, it was sportsmen
and guns and dogs till the end of the shooting season.

So I was a busy man and also a prosperous, because money cleaves to money
and Sir Walter's friends were mostly well-to-do, though few so rich as
him; and the gentlemen were experienced and knew a butler when they met
one.

But few be too occupied for romance to over-get 'em sooner or later, and
at forty I fell in love--a tiresome thing at that age and not to have been
expected from a bachelor-minded man same as me. And if I'd had the second
sight and been able to see where the fatal passion was going to take me,
I'd have kept my eyes off Jenny Owlet very careful indeed.

But so it was, though fifteen years separated us there's little doubt
Jenny loved me very well afore Tom Bond appeared. Because I'd never loved
before I saw her, and even an elderly man--and a butler's always elderly
by virtue of his calling--has a charm to the female mind if she knows he's
never loved before. In me Jenny saw a well-set-up and personable party,
inclined a thought to a full body, but smart and active, clean-shaven and
spotlessly clean every way, with br