Now, this might have made a very serious to-do between Mr. Oglander and his sister Joan, both of them being of the stiff-necked order, if he had been allowed to ride away like this. Mrs. Fermitage had her great carriage in the yard, and two black horses with wide valleys down their backs, rattling rings of the brightest brass, while they stood in the stable with a bail between them, and gently deigned to blow the chaff off from the oats of Shotover. This goodly pair made a great rush now into the mind of their mistress--the only sort of rush they ever made--and seeing her brother in that state of mind to get away from her, she became inspired with an equal desire to get away from him. "Will you kindly ring the bell," she said, "and order my horses to be put to? I think I have quite said every word I had to say. And being the only lady present, of course I labour under some--well, some little disadvantages. Not, of course, that I mean for a moment----" "To be sure not, Joan! You never do know what you mean. You would be a very nasty woman if you did. Now, do let us turn our minds the pleasant way to everything. If any word has come from me to lead to strong kind of argument, I beg pardon of everybody; and then there ought to be an end of it." Mrs. Fermitage scarcely knew what to say, but in a relenting way looked round for some one to take it up for her. And she was not long without somebody. "Mr. Oglander," said Russel Overshute, "you really ought to give us time to think. You are growing so hasty, sir, since you came back to your seat in the saddle, and your cross-country ways, that you want to ride over every one of us--ladies and gentlemen, all alike." The old Squire laughed, he could not help it, at the thought of his own effrontery. He felt that there might be some truth about it, ever since it had come into his mind that he might not after all be childless. He would not have any one know, for a thousands pounds, why he was laughing; or that half another word might turn it into weeping. He had seen it proved in learned books that no man knew the way to weep at his time of life; and if his own case went against it, he had the manners to be ashamed of it. So he waited till he felt that his face was right, and then he went up to his sister Joan, who was growing uneasy about her own words; and he took her two plump hands in his, and gave a glance, for all there present to be welcome witnesses. And then, having knowledge for the last ten years how much too fat she was to lift, he managed to kiss her in the two right places, disarranging nothing. His sister looked up at him, as soon as he had done it, with a sense of his propriety and study of her harmonies; and she whispered to him quietly, "I beg you pardon, brother." And he spoke up for all to hear him, "Joan, my dear, I beg your pardon."