e mark. But you
never _do_ let them know."

"No," said Lord Newhaven, as he shot his letter into the brass mouth in
the cottage wall, just below a window of "bulls'-eyes" and peppermints,
"I never do. I don't defend it. But--"

"But what?"

Lord Newhaven's face underwent some subtle change. His eyes fixed
themselves on a bottle of heart-shaped peppermints, and then met Dick's
suddenly, with the clear, frank glance of a schoolboy.

"But somehow, for the life of me, until things get serious--_I can't_."

Dick, whose perceptions were rather of a colossal than an acute order,
nevertheless perceived that he had received a confidence, and changed
the subject.

"Aren't you going to buy some stamps?" he asked, perfectly aware that
Lord Newhaven had had his reasons for walking to the post-office.

Lord Newhaven, who was being watched with affectionate interest from
behind the counter by the grocer postmaster, went in, hit his head
against a pendent ham, and presently emerged with brine in his hair and
a shilling's worth of stamps in his hand.

Later in the day, when he and Dick were riding up the little street,
with a view to having a look at the moor--for Middleshire actually has a
grouse moor, although it is in the Midlands--the grocer in his white
apron rushed out and waylaid them.

"Very sorry about the letter, my lord," he repeated volubly, touching
his forelock. "Hope her la'ship told you as I could not get it out
again, or I'm sure I would have done to oblige your lordship, and her
la'ship calling on purpose. But the post-office is that mean and
distrustful as it don't leave me the key, and once hanything is in, in
it is."

"Ah!" said Lord Newhaven, slowly. "Well, Jones, it's not your fault. I
ought not to have changed my mind. I suppose her ladyship gave you my
message that I wanted it back?"

"Yes, my lord, and her la'ship come herself, not ten minutes after you
was gone. But I've no more power over that there receptacle than a
hunlaid hegg, and that's the long and short of it. I've allus said, and
I say it again, 'Them as have charge of the post-office should have the
key.'"

"When I am made postmaster-general you _shall_ have it," said Lord
Newhaven, smiling. "It is the first reform that I shall bring about."
And he nodded to the smiling, apologetic man and trotted on, Dick beside
him, who was apparently absorbed in the action of his roan cob.

But Dick's mind had sustained a severe shock. That Lady N