"SIR,--We beg to inform you that one of our Handy Runabout 10-12h-p. cars, for which we recently received your esteemed order, is now to hand from the varnishers', and will be delivered at Belton Hall on Tuesday next. As requested, we have given the clutch-pedal and brake a particularly easy spring, with a view to the car being driven by a lady. "Thanking you for past favours, we are, sir yours faithfully," "THE DIABLEMENT-ODORANT MOTOR CO., LTD." Juggernaut put the letter back into his pocket. II. In due course the Belton motor conveyed its owner to Kilchester and left him there. "Shall I come back for you, sir?" inquired Mr Vick, the chauffeur. He was a kindly man, despite his exalted station. "No, thanks--I'll take the train. But I believe Lady Carr wants you to take her over to Croxley Dene this afternoon." "Her ladyship shall be took," said Mr Vick, with an indulgent smile--Lady Carr was a favourite of his--and forthwith returned to Belton. On running the car into the yard he found the coachman, Mr Windebank, a sadly diminished luminary in these days, putting a polish upon an unappreciative quadruped. "You and your machine, Mr Vick," announced Mr Windebank, "is wanted round at twelve sharp." It was then eleven-fifteen. "Ho!" replied the ruffled Mr Vick, feeling much as the Emperor Nero might have felt on being requested by the most recently immured early Christian to see that the arena lions were kept a bit quieter to-morrow night--"ho, indeed!" "Them's your orders, Mr Vick," said Mr Windebank, resuming the peculiar dental _obligato_ which seems to be the inseparable accompaniment of the toilet of a horse, temporarily suspended on this occasion to enable the performer to discharge his little broadside. Mr Vick turned off various taps and switches on his dash-board, and the humming of the engine ceased. "I take my orders," he proclaimed in majestic tones, "from the master and missus direct, and from nobody else." Mr Windebank, after spending some moments in groping for a crushing rejoinder, replied-- "Well, you'd better go inside and get 'em. And you'd better 'ang a nosebag on your sparking-plug in the meanwhile," he added, with sudden and savage irrelevance. Mr Vick adopted the former of these two suggestions, with the result that at the hour of noon the car slid submissively round to the front of the Hall. Presently Daphne appeared, and disregarding the door which Mr Vick was holding open for her, stepped up into the driver's seat--the throne itself--and took the wheel in her vigorous little hands. "I am going to drive, Vick," she observed cheerfully. Mr Vick preserved his self-control and smiled faintly. "I suppose you have a licence, my lady?" he inquired.