upon
a narrow, brier-set path especially when that man keeps himself
perseveringly behind one. So my lady waited until they should be out
of the hateful wood.

Thus they went in a silence unbroken until they came out in a bye-lane
that gave upon the highway. Here, with the glory of the sunset all
about her, she paused, quick-breathing, flushed and with witching eyes
a-droop and reached out her hands to him; but the Major chanced to be
looking just then at a tall gentleman lounging toward them down the
shady lane.

"Yonder is Mr. Dalroyd, I think, madam," said the Major, "he shall
relieve you of my presence," and into those pleading, outstretched
hands he set--the basket.

My lady started away, her lips quivered and, blinded by sudden tears
she turned and sped away.

So the Major limped homeward through the afterglow, quite unconscious
of the ugly, knobby bludgeon beneath his arm, his mind once more busied
with the problem viewed from yet another aspect:

Question: Might it be possible that a true woman can be womanly no
matter what she chance to wear?

CHAPTER XIV

SOME DESCRIPTION OF A KISS

Mrs. Agatha, gathering beans and aided by the Viscount's two valets,
smiled and dimpled on each in turn while the Sergeant, busied in an
adjacent corner with a ladder, cursed softly but with deep and
sustained heartiness.

Mrs. Agatha's basket was three parts full and Sergeant Zebedee, having
pretty well exhausted the English and French tongues, was vituperating
grimly in Low Dutch, when a bell jangled distantly, a faint but
determined summons, and immediately after, the Viscount's voice was
heard near at hand and imperative:

"Arthur! Charles! Where a plague are the prepasterous dags! Oho,
Charles! Arthur!"

The two valets, galvanised to action exceeding swift, started, saluted
Mrs. Agatha and betook themselves within doors at commendable speed,
and the Sergeant, having at last juggled his ladder into position,
vituperated them out of sight and was in the act of mounting when he
was aware of Mrs. Agatha at his elbow.

"'Tis surely a lovely day, Sergeant!" said she demurely.

"Is it so, mam?"

"Well, isn't it?"

"Why mam, I ain't had doo time to notice same, d'ye see. But, since
you ax me I say no, mam, 'tis a dam--no, a cur--no, a plaguy hot day."
Saying which, the Sergeant rolled snowy shirt-sleeve a little higher
above a remarkably hairy and muscular arm and mounted one rung of the
ladder.