mighty breathing, in its race of progress and civilization, darkens
the southern sky. The trains of great railroad systems speed between
Banbridge and the City. Half the male population of Banbridge and a
goodly proportion of the female have for years wrestled for their
daily bread in the City, which the little village has long echoed,
more or less feebly, though still quite accurately, with its own
particular little suburban note.

Banbridge had its own "season," beginning shortly after Thanksgiving,
and warming gradually until about two weeks before Lent, when it
reached its high-water mark. All winter long there were luncheons and
teas and dances. There was a whist club, and a flourishing woman's
club, of course. It was the women who were thrown with the most
entirety upon the provincial resources. But they were a resolved set,
and they kept up the gait of progress of their sex with a good deal
of success. They improved their minds and their bodies, having even a
physical-culture club and a teacher coming weekly from the City. That
there were links and a golf club goes without saying.

It was spring, and golf had recommenced for some little time. Mrs.
Henry Lee and Mrs. William Van Dorn passed the links that afternoon.

The two ladies were being driven about Banbridge by Samson Rawdy, the
best liveryman in Banbridge, in his best coach, with his two best
horses. The horses, indeed, two fat bays, were considered as rather
sacred to fashionable calls, as was the coach, quite a resplendent
affair, with very few worn places in the cloth lining.

Banbridge ladies never walked to make fashionable calls. They had a
coach even for calls within a radius of a quarter of a mile, where