ng a coachman to fit the livery.
I could, in this, give her no assistance, or, to speak more accurately,
she would permit none, and finally she announced, with an air of
triumph which plainly called for congratulations, that she had secured
what she wanted.

The first time I saw my new coachman, there was something irritatingly
familiar about him. He seemed to know me very well, too, and called me
"Mis' Jardine" with a nod of the head as if we had formerly been pals.
But under Bee's tutelage I was on terms of distant civility with my
menials instead of knowing all their joys and sorrows as in the past.

But Bee was charmed with the _tout ensemble_. She said he matched the
footman better than the Englishman did, because the Englishman was
Irish anyway.

So that first afternoon Bee arranged to go to the Copsely Golf Club
just at the close of the tournament, and to drive up when the porches
would be filled with the players and their friends having tea. Bee
likes to make a dramatic entrance, and often relates in tones of
positive awe how she once saw a Frenchwoman in an opera-cloak composed
entirely of white tulle run the whole length of the Grand Opera House
in Paris in order to make the tulle, which was cut to resemble wings,
float out diaphanously behind her.

So as we bowled smartly along, the sorrels having been reduced by hard
driving until they were models of symmetry, the new victoria shining,
our new liveries glittering in the eyes of the populace, and we
ourselves ragged out, as Aubrey said, as if our motto had been, "Damn
the expense," we certainly felt complacent.

"Now watch him pull the sorrels up," whispered Bee. "I taught him
myself."

With that we arrived almost at a fire-engine pace in front of the
club-house steps, and the carriage stopped. But to our horror, Bee's
coachman leaned so far backward to pull up that his body was perfectly
horizontal, and--yes--I was sure of it, he braced his foot against the
dashboard to get a leverage. I have seen grocery-boys pull up and turn
sidewise on their seats in exactly the same manner.

Bee's face was purple.

The sorrels, unaccustomed to such a jerk of their bits, instantly began
to back, and two men rushed down the steps to our assistance. But Jehu
was equal to the occasion. He slapped the horses' backs with the
reins, and joyously drove our two off wheels up on to the lowest step
of the club-house porch.

In that attitude we paused, and _I_ go