But Miss Sara bided her time, and when, on the homeward journey, they had the car quite to themselves, with no would-be passengers signaling to him from windows or waiting anywhere along the quiet, sleepy street ahead of them, she opened fire with one of their favorite bits:

In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon.

She declaimed it very loudly, so as to be heard above the internal noises which seemed a necessity of Juggernaut's progress, but Mr. Allerby failed to make the usual quotation in response:

O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

She tried again on a more personal note, her old voice quavering with reassuring friendliness:

"You-you seem to be feeling the heat to-day, Mr. Allerby. But surely

you must have felt greater heat than this in South Africa?"

"Ah, one was younger then," he said, making an effort to pull himself together because of the friendliness of that voice. "To tell the truth, Miss Sara, I am about to leave this pleasant land of afternoon; and I am sorry."

She was startled. She was also sorry. "About to leave Winfield? Where

are you going?"

"I do not know," he replied drearily.
"Why are you going?"

He answered with a faint smile:
"To escape company."
"Goodness!

They've discovered him!" she thought; but aloud she said: "To escape the duties of hospitality? That sounds almost-rude, Mr. Allerby."

"Fortunately, one has the privilege of being rude to a brother," he muttered.

"Oh, I disagree with you, I disagree with you, absolutely." The old lady sat forward earnestly on the edge of her seat. "My father used to say that anybody could be nice to strangers; that the surest test of good breeding was the courtesy which prevailed in the family circle- Unless, of course, one's brother had forfeited respect?" she finished tentatively.

"Old Nick forfeit respect? Good Lord, no! But look here, Miss Sara,"he turned half toward her, "how 'd you like to entertain a brother you had n't seen for thirty years in-in a room over a mews, where you did your own cooking and washing, yes, and ironing, too? Eh?"

"No brother would think the less of you for poverty," she said gently. "He would only be sorry."

"Exactly. And he need n't be, thank you! He jolly well need n't be. I 'm not the one to let 'em down. Besides, it is n't Nick I mind so much; it's-she."

"Aha!" thought Miss Sara, triumphantly. She had found what she was looking for; and it was no hidden crime, no disgrace, no ugliness of any sort. There are certain things any woman can understand, and one of them is the tone of voice in which he spoke that pronoun. This way romance had passed, and in the atmosphere of romance, Miss Sara, despite her seventy years of spinsterhood, or perhaps because of them, was thoroughly at home.

"I imagine," she said, "that you are one of these remittance-men I 've read about."

"Something of the sort," he murmured, "only without the remittance. My people fancy-otherwise. The fact

is, I 've lied to my people, Miss Sara, lied to them most abominably."

"Of course you have," she said cheerfully, patting the seat beside her. "Come here, my dear boy, and tell me all about it." And at the look in her motherly old eyes, Harold Allerby's fifty years of struggle and loss and lonely failure disappeared, leaving him for the moment the boy she called him.

He looked about. Nothing was astir in all the drowsy neighborhood except the Prewitt pony, in fat possession of the tracks a block or two ahead. It seemed as good a time as any for a trolley-ca to take its rest. So he abandoned the wheel, and went in to Miss Sara, and told her all about it.

When he had finished, her face was alight with the joy of conflict.

"You wait till I get hold of that Jimmy Grant!" To Miss Sara the gray-haired doctor and his friends were merely youths who had exchanged their balls and tops for amusements less innocuous. "I'll make them pay for the scandals they start at their precious club! As to this Lord and Lady Allerby," the titles rolled trippingly from her tongue, although Miss Sara was the least of snobs,-"don't you worry about entertaining them. Winfield will do that for you."

THE erect, soldierly little gentleman who got off the train from Louisville some weeks later, accompanied by a graceful, veiled lady with the sort of figure which may still be called willowy, looked about him in some surprise.

"Quite a civilized sort of place, my love," he murmured reassuringly to the lady, and a moment later shook hands with our Mr. Allerby, difficult to recognize in smart gray flannels, as undemonstratively as if they had parted yesterday.

"Lookin' very fit, Hal," he said. "Thanks. So 're you, old man," our Mr. Allerby was heard to reply. "Lost an arm, I see. Congratulations."

"Yes, I was lucky not to have it the right, eh? Quite a lot of people about,

"Ah, very decent of the townspeople; very," commented Sir Nicholas, also flushing, and looking straight before him. But the lady at his side lifted her veil, and spoke in a musical, clear, carrying voice straight to the interested crowd.

"How perfectly sweet of you! Thanks awfully."

And she smiled. The Coffin Club later compared notes about that smile. Each felt, as had many a better man before him, that it was directed exclusively toward him.

"What a ducky car you 've got, Hal," continued the carrying voice, as Mr. Allerby led them toward Tim Cassidy's handsomest limousine, the one he rented to only the most exclusive funerals. "And what a quaint custom to introduce the chauffeur! So democratic! Is it always done in the States? And do you call your servants 'help,' as a

smart-looking woman I met in Chicago did?"

"He is n't a chauffeur; he 's the owner," murmured Mr. Allerby, squirming.

"Oh, you job the car when you want it. A good idea for us, Nick," she said to her husband, brightly. "It would

save a pot of money. Everybody's so frightfully poor at home now, Hal dear!" She sighed. "It's a relief to find you all so comfy here in the States."

"Sybil was always strong on comfort, you remember, Hal," remarked Sir Nicholas, smiling.

"Oh, but I can rough it, too; you'll see,' she protested. "I know about bachelor establishments."

99

If Mr. Allerby had a momentary picture of his own bachelor establishment above above Meehan's livery-stable, with a gas-range in one corner, beside the wash-stand, and a clothes-line stretched conveniently across the room, he promptly banished it, with other ghosts. It was not to such a place, thanks to Miss Sara Truman, that his guests were bound. But as they passed Juggernaut, somnolent upon a switch, he averted a conscious and rather guilty

eye.

Not so Lady Sybil, who was an expe

rienced tourist and determined to be interested in everything.

"Fancy, Nick, a tram-car out in these wilds! Are n't the Americans wonderful? But it does n't appear to be a very active tram-car, does it?"

"Takin' its vacation this week," explained Mr. Cassidy, from the front seat.

"How quaint!" murmured Lady Sybil, whether of Juggernaut or of the talkative chauffeur it would be difficult to say.

"Quaint" was a word she found frequent use for, especially when Mr. Cassidy drew up with a flourish in front of a wide, white brick cottage set well back from the street, among elms; on the pillared portico Dr. Grant's 'Mandy was to be seen, rather flustered, hastening to remove Dr. Grant's forgotten sign from beside the front door. The doctor kept a cot, fortunately, in his consulting-room down-town.

"Come in; come right in, folks, and rest yo' hats," urged 'Mandy, ingratiatingly, concealing the sign behind her.

Lady Sybil gazed at this fat brown. person in some dismay.

"A native woman, Nick, and apparently in charge! Do you do you suppose it's all right?" she whispered.

"Certainly," reassured her husband, audibly. "Old Hal 's no squawman. Besides, that sort of thing happens farther West, I fancy."

The interior of the house reassured her still further a long, pleasant room, filled with books and etchings and other Lares and Penates, in which Dr. Grant took a pardonable pride.

"Really, you do yourself awfully well, Hal," commented Lady Sybil in distinct relief. "This room might have been at home. That portrait, for instance, and the old spinet, quite charming. You seem to have accumulated rather nice moss for such a rolling stone."

Mr. Allerby, who had accumulated nothing except years and friends, shrugged a deprecating shoulder. And when the native woman came in, bearing a native drink in frosted silver cups, which Lady Sybil pronounced quite as invigorating as tea, her satisfaction was complete.

"So glad you 've a woman to maid me," she said graciously. "I left Jenkins

at home, she hates so to rough it. Send her up in half an hour, will you, Hal? I'll be ready for my bath."

"Huh?" inquired 'Mandy, in a deep contralto.

Mr. Allerby took her aside and explained rather nervously, Dr. Grant's 'Mandy being a personage with whom it was not well to take liberties. But the famous Arbuthnot smile was not without its effect even here, for 'Mandy Iwas heard to mutter:

"Oh, well, ef it's on'y hookin' up and such-like, reck'n I could mek out to oblige her. But I ain't goin' to wash no grown-up pusson, not for nobody! I is a modest woman, I is, ef some ain't."

WINFIELD, at least, will never forget the festivities with which it made hectic the three days of the baronet's visit. He spoke on the first night at the operahouse, thereby displacing Charlie Chaplin himself (in screen version). And though his words were brief and to the point, he was secretly felt to be outdone in eloquence by the introduction of Judge Cary, and even by the impromptu epilogue of Mr. Cassidy, who was moved by the Arbuthnot smile, and other things, to pay an Irishman's tribute to the women of England. Indeed, during the evening every eye in the house remained eagerly fastened upon the women of England as personified in Lady Sybil, shameless and quite astonishingly lovely in a little black tulle and the Allerby diamonds.

"And she fifty, if a day!" was the feminine verdict.

They had dined first with Miss Sara Truman, an event which brought out of storage not only the Truman silver and the Truman lace, but which went to the length of Tipsy Parson Sauce on the ice-cream, than which Winfield hospitality can no further spread itself. Miss Sara was by principle and practice a strict total abstainer, but every one knows that Tipsy Parson is not a beverage, but a condiment. Until dessert arrived, the hostess had been a little nervous, despite her lofty assurances to their married niece that a lady could be no more than a lady, no matter what people called her; but under the beneficent influence of the sauce her

slight stiffness toward her guests melted into a warm benevolence.

This the tact of Lady Sybil augmented into something like intimacy. "Do you know," she had remarked as they left the table, "you look in all that lace and jet"-Miss Sara was wearing the Truman jets "like a dear aunt of my own, father's sister?"

"The the earl's sister?"

Lady Sybil smiled assent.

Now, to be reminiscent of the sister of an earl can but be flattering to the stanchest American heart; the old lady responded in kind:.

"And you look, my dear, like the sort of woman a man could never forget-if he tried."

"So they are, when there are any. With the Allerbys there are n't, you see. Only there was a rich aunt of sorts, married into soap, or something; and naturally, at the time Nick and I eloped, we thought she 'd die pretty soon and leave us a bit. Instead, she left it all to Hal. Rather a sell on us, was n't it?"

"I wonder why she did that," said Miss Sara.

"Oh, because she was vexed with Nick for marrying anything so useless as me, I think. And because she was angry with me for having jilted Hal."

"Oh, you did jilt Mr. Allerby?" asked the other, gravely.

Lady Sybil hung her fair head like a child that is being scolded.

"I'm afraid I did, rather. You see, we 'd grown up together, and they both wanted me so badly, and I simply could n't decide which I'd have. You know how that is?" Miss Sara, who had never been "wanted badly" by any one in her life, nodded a comprehending head. "If one could only have married them both! But since one could n't, and Nick went off to India, I thought it would better be Hal. Then when Nick came back, I—I saw it really could n't be. Hal was too sweet about it. He said, in marrying Nick, it really was like marrying them both. But," she added, with a ruefu. little sigh, "at first things went rather badly. Father could n't do anything for us, and Nick was in such an expensive regiment, and I'm afraid I 'm rather expensive myself. It looked as if Nick would have to resign from the service and go into trade, or something. The soap aunt died just in time.

"Of course one hated to take Hal's money, but he insisted that it ought to go with the title, and that there had always been an Allerby in the service and always must be, and that in any case he 'd settle the property on our first son. Then, too, he kept writing back that everything he touched turned to gold, he 's always so lucky. So for the sake of the children-"

"There are children?"

"I've two boys fighting in France," said the Englishwoman, quietly, and her lip quivered.

The effect of the Tipsy Parson Sauce was wearing off, but Miss Sara forgave something to the quiver of that lip.

"You must be very glad," she said, laying her hand upon the other's.

"I am," was the stanch reply, "even if they don't-but of course they will! What troubled us most about Hal," she went on evenly, "was the fear that possibly things were n't going quite well with him, that he was 'bluffing' us, as you say in the States. It seemed so odd that he never wanted to come home even to see the boys off. He 's always been so good to the boys. Then I was afraid, too, that he might have got himself into trouble of sorts, bad ways you know what bachelors are. So Nick and I were awfully glad of the opportunity to look him up. That 's why I came.'

"And if he had been 'bluffing' you?" inquired the prosecuting counsel.

"Then we should have taken him home, of course. Whatever we have is his, you know," said Lady Sybil. "But

I ought to have known he 'd never let us down in any way. He's so proud. And as for the rest, while he 's not really rich should you say?"

"Not exactly rich," murmured Miss Sara.

"Not for America, certainly; but quite comfortable. I can't tell you what a relief that is to us. Simple, of course, that odd little cottage, with only the one native woman to look after him. But Hal never cared for luxury, like the rest of us. And he seems to have fallen among friends."

"Yes," said Miss Sara; "that at least is true." And the look she sent across to the "lucky" man who had chosen to buy happiness for those he loved was a tribute he ought not to have missed.

The entertainment of the distinguished visitors progressed without a hitch even until the final moment. The Allerbys, personally conducted, gazed appreciatively at scenery, at thoroughbred horses, at oil-wells in action; they were introduced to a barbecue, following a fox-hunt, conducted, to their shocked astonishment, on foot, among the underbrush of the river-bank. "If we flush a fox, shall I be expected to take a shot at it?" demanded Sir Nicholas, unhappily, of his brother.