eep the peace, claps her hands and cries out, "Excellent!"
with that pretty enthusiasm which makes the author of a remark feel
that there must have been more in his observation than he himself had
discovered.

"There, Ben, if you are wise you will act on this clever suggestion of
Dr. Cricket's, and travel off to the land of fancy, where you can make
the weather to suit yourself, where fogs never fall, and fish always
bite, and sails always fill with breezes from the right quarter, and
whiff about at a convenient moment when you want to come home--oh, I
say!" she adds with a joyful upward inflection, "there's the sun, and
I am going for the mail."

"I'll go with you," volunteers Master Ben.

"Thank you, but Mr. Marsden said that I might drive his colt in the
sulky."

"Not the _colt_!" we all cry in chorus.

"The _colt_," she answers with decision.

"Not in the sulky?"

"Yes, in the sulky."

"Surely, Professor Anstice--" I begin; but before I have time for
more, Winifred is out of the room, and reappears, after ten minutes,
strangely transformed by her short corduroy skirt and gaiters, her cap
and gauntleted gloves, to a Lady Gay Spanker. I do not like to see her
so; but then I am fifty years old, and I live in Massachusetts.
Perhaps my aversion to the sporting proclivities of the modern woman
is only an inheritance of the prejudices of my ancestors, who thought
all worldly amusements sinful, and worst of all in a woman. Even the
Mayflower saints and heroes had their cast-iron limitations, and we
can't escape from them, try as we will. We may throw over creed and
catechism; but inherited instinct remains. The shadow of Plymouth Rock
is over us all.

Just here I look up to see Winifred spin along the road before the
house, seated in a yellow-wheeled sulky, behind the most unmanageable
colt on this side of the Mississippi, as I verily believe. Of course
Mr. Marsden is very glad to have the breaking process taken off his
hands; but if I were Professor Anstice I don't think I should like to
have my daughter take up the profession of a jockey. I must admit,
however, that she looks well in that tight-fitting jacket, with the
bit of scarlet at her throat, and her hair rippling up over the edges
of her gray cap.

I wonder why I chronicle all this small beer about Winifred Anstice
and old Marsden's colt. I suppose because nothing really worth noting
has occurred, and it is not for nothing that a diary is called a
co