"Nothing, mamma," said Polly, leaning forward with her elbows on
the back of the seat in front of her; "only we thought we'd heard
you say something about it before."

"Let's drop them out, if they're so saucy," suggested Alan. "Don't
you want me to drive, Mrs. Adams?"

"Thank you, Alan; but I don't dare trust you, when you are no more
used to him, for he stumbles so. Go on, Job!" she added, with an
inviting chirrup, as she leaned forward and rattled the whip up
and down in its socket, to remind Job of its existence.

But Job was familiar with that operation, and from long experience
he had learned its lack of significance. Accordingly, he only
tilted one ear back towards his mistress, and went on at his
former jog.

It was one of the finest days of the summer, one of the days when
the season seems to have reached its height and appears to be
standing still, for a moment, in the full enjoyment of its own
beauty. A shower early in the day had washed away the dust, and
every leaf and blossom by the roadside stood up in all the glad
pride of its clean face, and turned its eyes disdainfully upward,
away from the brown earth below. The girls chattered and laughed
while they rode through the town, past the cemetery, where Mrs.
Adams had some difficulty in overcoming Job's desire to turn in,
across the long white bridge over the river, and through the quiet
little village on its eastern bank. Then they turned southward,
where the road lay over the level meadows, now past a great corn-
field, now by the side of a piece of grass land dotted thickly