uld get,
when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

Much of this persecution I might have put up with, indeed, had I not
heard, in one way or another, that he was doing me the honor of calling
me his intimate. This I could not stand, and I soberly resolved to
leave Asquith and go back to town, which I should indeed have done if
deliverance had not arrived from an unexpected quarter.

One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the
steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join
him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from
interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with
a fox terrier. Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a
three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone
with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and
I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the
direction of Mohair.

"That must be your friend Cooke," remarked the Celebrity, looking up.

There could be no doubt of it. With little difficulty I recognized on
the box the familiar figure of my first important client, and beside him
was a lady whom I supposed to be Mrs. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, although
I had had no previous knowledge that such a person existed. The horses
were on a brisk trot, and Mr. Cooke seemed to be getting the best out
of them for the benefit of the sprinkling of people on the inn porch.
Indeed, I could not but admire the dexterous turn of the wrist which
served Mr. Cooke to swing his leaders into the circle and up the hill,
while the liveried guard leaned far out in anticipation of a stumble.
Mr. Cooke hailed me with a beaming smile and a flourish of the whip as
he drew up and descended from the box.

"Maria," he exclaimed, giving me a hearty grip, "this is the man that
won Mohair. My wife, Crocker."

I was somewhat annoyed at this effusiveness before the Celebrity, but I
looked up and caught Mrs. Cooke's eye. It was the calm eye of a general.

"I am glad of the opportunity to thank you, Mr. Crocker," she said
simply. And I liked her from that moment.

Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for
permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads.
So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with
such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on
the veranda. The C