ce. You haven't been over
to Hawthorne yet, Mr. Ringfield, how is that? But never mind, you'll
be one of us after this afternoon at any rate. Do you play croquet?"

Looking rather astonished, Ringfield said "_No_," and the emphasis led
Mrs. Abercorn to smile as she observed him more closely. She herself
was one of those people of good birth who instinctively ask, no matter
where they are placed, of everybody they meet, "Is she a _lady_?" "Is
he a _gentleman_?" but who, in spite of this inherent and clannish
trait, manage to make friends with the mammon of No-Family. She was
literally as broad as she was high; short hair, turning grey, was
fantastically curled about her clever, dark eyes; she had two hats, one
for summer and one for winter, the latter a man's old seal cap; her
skirts and jackets were skimp and dowdy, and her features and
complexion unattractive, yet the authority and ease, the whole manner
of the true lady made her a delightful companion, and she would have
been equally diverting and diverted at a Royal Audience in Buckingham
Palace or at a bean-feast on an Indian reserve. She displayed
ornaments that were not precisely jewels, the value of which was of
genealogical order; thus, she wore her grandfather's fobs and seals,
her mother's bracelets of bog-oak and lava, and her brooch contained
the hair of her only child, long deceased. She had had one
dinner-dress for ten years of black "uncrushable grenadine," cut
square, and it was quite true that she was the niece of an earl and the
daughter of an admiral, and that she had eloped with the Rev. Marcus
Abercorn eighteen years ago.

Ringfield had never met any one like her before, but in spite of her
accent, so extremely English that in the Canadian country it was almost
certain to be dubbed "affected," and in spite of a bright worldliness
he found unusual in a clergyman's wife, he liked her very much and
watched her manipulation of the mare--Flora Macdonald--with great
interest, and not a little apprehension.

The bad four miles turned out to consist of alternate patches of
ancient corduroy road, the logs exposed for a foot or so above the
soil, and a long hogs-back of dyke-veined limestone, the ridges of spar
and quartz cutting deep into the rock.

Mrs. Abercorn sighed eloquently for the lanes of Old England as the
mare pranced, and the buggy flew over the various obstructions, bumping
and swinging in a reckless manner Ringfield had never seen eq