honor he does the family with perhaps two or three exceptions.
When he comes to meet me,, there is a regular program to be gone
through. It varies only in a very slight degree and begins like
this: --

I say, "Well, Croft, it is very nice to see you," and he says,
"The same to you, miss, and many of them." He then begins to
"riminize"; the word is his own. He begins with the auspicious
day on which I was born, and describes how he himself went to
fetch the doctor in the dead of the night. He describes minutely
his costume and the part the elements played on the occasion; they
were evidently very much upset. He then goes on to say how he
held me on my first pony, and taught me to ride and drive. Having
finally certificated me as competent to drive a pair of horses
under any circumstances, I ask how the children are, Sara in
particular. Here Croft looks heavenward, and says she looks a
picture, and adds that she looks very like me. The footman knows
that here the program is at an end, Croft having no greater
praise to bestow on mortal woman, and he opens the carriage door
and I get in.

Diana knows what it is to travel t he distance of three miles in
the suffocating embraces of Hugh and Betty; otherwise she would
probably have sent the children to meet me.

The smell of the brougham brought my childhood vividly back to me.
I shut my eyes and instinctively put out my hand; and that hand
that was always held out to us as children took mine in its loving
clasp, and I was a child again, home from a visit, so glad to feel
that hand again and to see that mother from whom it was agony to