f chemical elements, stars in their courses, kings of England
with their Magna Chartas and habeas corpuses. Nor content even then,
he must needs grapple with Roman emperors and Greek republics, and
master the fabled lore concerning gods and goddesses, cloven-footed
satyrs, and naked nymphs of the grove. But he understood that, in
spite of all this culture, in spite, too, of his greater care for
costume and his increased employment of soap and water, Mavis was
still enormously above him. The aunt, a smooth-tongued little woman
whom for a long time he regarded as implacably hostile to his suit,
made him measure the height of the dividing space every time that he
called at North Ride Cottage. Plainly trying to crush him with the
respectability both of herself and of her surroundings, she showed off
all the presents from the Abbey--the china and glass ornaments, the
piano; the photographs of Mr. Barradine on horseback, of the late Lady
Evelyn Barradine in her pony-carriage, of Mr. Barradine's guests with
guns waiting to shoot pheasants. And she conducted him into and out of
the two choicely upholstered rooms which on certain occasions Mr.
Barradine deigned to occupy for a night or a couple of nights--for
instance, when the Abbey House was being painted and he fled the smell
of paint, when the Abbey House was closed and he came down from London
to see his agent on business, when he wanted to make an early start at
the cub-hunting and he couldn't trust the servants of the Abbey House
to rouse him if he slept there.

"Last time of all," and Mrs. Petherick rubbed her hands together and
smiled insinuatingly, "he paid me the pretty compliment of saying that
I made him more comfortable than he ever is in his own house. I said,
'If we can't let you feel at home here, it's something new among the
Pethericks.'"

It seemed that the bond between the humble family and the great one
had existed for several generations. It was a tradition that the
Pethericks should serve the Barradines. Mavis' grandfather had been
second coachman at the Abbey; her aunt's husband had been valet to Mr.
Everard and made the grand tour of Europe with him; aunt herself was
of the Petherick blood, and had been a housemaid at the Abbey. It
also seemed to be a tradition that the acknowledgment made by the
Barradines for this fidelity of the Pethericks should be boundless in
its extent.

Aunt spoke of the Right Honorable Everard as though she held him like
a p