mott--the whole country
called her Nell--hunted three days a week every winter.

"Why shouldn't she be young?" John Gafferty, the groom, used to say.
"Hasn't she five good horses and the full of her skin of meat and drink?
The likes of her never get old."

Johnny Gafferty was rubbing down a tall bay mare when Mrs. MacDermott
opened the stable door and entered the loose box.

"Johnny," she said, "you'll put the cob in the governess cart this
afternoon and have him round at three o'clock. I'm going up to the
station to meet my nephew. I've had a letter from his father to say
he'll be here to-day."

Johnny Gafferty, though he had been eight years in Mrs. MacDermott's
service, had never before heard of her nephew.

"It could be," he said, cautiously, "that the captain will be bringing a
horse with him, or maybe two."

He felt that a title of some sort was due to the nephew of a lady like
Mrs. MacDennott. The assumption that he would have a horse or two with
him was natural. All Mrs. MacDermott's friends hunted.

"He's not a captain," said Mrs. MacDennott, "and he's bringing no horses
and he doesn't hunt. What's more, Johnny, he doesn't even ride, couldn't
sit on the back of a donkey. So his father says, anyway."

"Glory be to God!" said Johnny, "and what sort of a gentleman will he be
at all?"

"He's a poet," said Mrs. MacDennott.

Johnny felt that he had perhaps gone beyond the limits of respectful
criticism in expressing his first astonishment at the amazing news that
Mrs. MacDermott's nephew could not ride.

"Well," he said, "there's worse things than poetry in the world."

"Very few sillier things," said Mrs. MacDermott. "But that's not the
worse there is about him, Johnny. His health is completely broken down.
That's why he's coming here. Nerve strain, they call it."

"That's what they would call it," said Johnny sympathetically, "when
it's a high-up gentleman like a nephew of your own. And it's hard to
blame him. There's many a man does be a bit foolish without meaning any
great harm by it."

"To be a bit foolish" is a kindly, West of Ireland phrase which means to
drink heavily.

"It's not that," said Mrs. MacDermott. "I don't believe from what I've
heard of him that the man has even that much in him. It's just what his
father says, poetry and nerves. And he's coming here for the good of his
health. It's Mr. Bertram they call him, Mr. Bertram Connell."

Mrs. MacDermott walked up and down the platfo