In my half-intelligent plan I intended first to stop at the house we
had gone by, and had reached the gate of its front lane when I met one
of its household, a lad of sixteen, on the pike.

"Yes, he had just seen the disabled coach."

I said that by business appointment with the lady who had just left the
coach I had gone to the next railway station northward in order to meet
her. That I had come down the turnpike on a hired horse and met her
and her servants pushing forward to our appointment as best they could.
Now, I said, our business, a law matter, was accomplished and she was
gone on on my hired horse. This span I was taking back to the stable
whence I had hired them for her in the morning.

The boy's graciousness shamed me through and through. "Why, certainly!
He would have the coach drawn up to the house before sunrise and would
keep it as long as I liked." He asked me in, but I went on to the
little railway town, repeated my tarradiddle at its "hotel," and soon
was asleep.


["'Tarradi'l','" said Mme. Castanado, "tha'z may be a species of
paternoster, I suppose, eh?"

"No," said Scipion, "I think tha'z juz' a fashion of speech that he
took a drink. I do that myself, going to bed."

Chester explained, but said that to admit one's untruthfulness by even
a nickname implied _some_ compunction. Whereat two or three put in: