"I shall be enjoying myself hugely every afternoon, and earning my living, and be doing quite the proper thing. Nobody, not even Cousin Thorold, can say it is not nice for me to be driving an old lady out every day! Why!—Now I come to think of it, Cousin Thorold said he expected a Miss Horatia Buchan to a tea-party at his house to-morrow. Can it be the same? She's very sporting looking; not at all his style." "Horatia and Thorold have been friends for a long time," said Mrs. Wharnecliffe. "Once upon a time I hoped they would marry." "Oh, but they'd never suit each other," said Gentian in a startled tone. "They're both so managing and masterful, and she must be years older than he is." "They're just the same age, I believe—" "Miss Horatia looks as if she could be a great-grandmother—" "When you come to her age, you won't feel so ancient as that." Gentian laughed, and said no more. She drove Miss Anne out the next afternoon from two to four, but came home to Miss Ward with a very doleful face. "She won't let me go faster than a horse. Says she likes quiet motion, so that she can enjoy the air without being blown about. Isn't it a humiliation and degradation for my dear Mousie! We got no distance, and when I left her, I scorched along the road for all I was worth. Mousie and I were panting to do it. It's too horrible for words! I shall never have the patience to keep the job. Aren't you sorry for me, Waddy? Say you are!" "No, I won't, but you can put on speed now, and change your dress, for we are going to Mr. Holt's to tea. I can't think why the present generation want such rapid motion. It's very bad for their brains!" Thorold's tea-party and meeting were a great success. Miss Horatia was there, and looked on at Gentian tea-making with an amused eye. "What do you think of that child?" she asked Thorold bluntly. "Does she think our old world, revolves on its axis entirely and wholly for her?" "She's very young," said Thorold apologetically. "But life will teach her what it has taught us." "We don't all learn the same lessons. Some can't be taught, and some won't be. I don't think I'm at all an apt learner. But when I was her age, I was more malleable, I fancy—" Thorold shook his head at her. "Never!" he said, and then he went off to talk to some one else. Gentian chattered away to all the farmers' wives as if she had known them all her life. When the meeting was over, and they were dispersing, one of them, a Mrs. Homer, said to Gentian pleasantly: "Come along one afternoon, miss, and have a cup of tea with me. I've always held up for you, though there be many which say you be too light-fingered on the organ for 'em on Sundays. There be almost a merriment in your pieces afore and after church; they say it be not seemly in church—" "Don't you feel happy on Sundays? I always do," returned Gentian. "Why shouldn't we be bright and cheerful in church?"