he law,
for manly decision, and the gift of leadership; and imagined that in
talking down his mother's gentle protests he had convinced her of his
superior wisdom.

When he had made it sufficiently clear, however, that he did not wish
Lady Mary to accompany him to town, young Sir Peter made haste to
depart thither himself, on the very reasonable plea that he required a
new outfit of clothes.

Was it possible that his departure brought a dreadful relief to the
mother who had prayed day and night, for eight-and-twenty months, that
her son might return to her?

She tried and tried, on her knees in her own room, to realize what her
feelings would have been if Peter had been killed in South Africa.
She tried to recall the first ecstasy of joy at his home-coming. She
remembered, as she might have remembered a dream, the hours of agony
she had passed, looking out over these very blue hills, and dumbly
beseeching God to spare her boy--her only son--out of all the mothers'
sons who were laying down their lives for England.

A terrible thought assailed her now and then, like an ugly spectre
that would not be laid--that if Peter had died of his wound--if he had
fallen as so many of his comrades had fallen, in the war--he would
have been a hero for all time; a glorious memory, safely enshrined and
enthroned above all these miserable petty doubts and disappointments.
She cast the thought from her in horror and piteous grief, and
reiterated always her passionate gratitude for his preservation. But,
nevertheless, the living, breathing Peter was a daily and hourly
disappointment to the mother who loved him. His ways were not her
ways, nor his thoughts her thoughts; and often she felt that she could
have found more to say to a complete stranger, and that a stranger
would have understood her better.

The old ladies, returning from their drive, generally took a little
turn upon the terrace. This constituted half their daily exercise,
since their morning walk consisted of a stroll round the kitchen
garden.

"It prevents cramp after sitting so long," one would say to the other.

"And it is only right to show the gardener that we take an interest,"
the other would reply.

The gardener translated the interest they took into a habit of
fault-finding, which nearly drove him mad.

"It du spile the vine weather vor I," he would frequently grumble
to his greatest crony, James Coachman, who, for his part, bitterly
resented the abnormal