“That’s not Pilgrim’s horse,” Mr. Selby said. “It must be out of his own stables; and he did not get that for nothing.” Even Liddy got up from where she was sitting, a little out of the way, to peep at the new arrival. He came in a few minutes after whip in hand. “You are not so early, Mrs. Selby, as I feared. I made a very early start lest you should be gone before I could get here.” “We are not so early as all that,” said Joan, “and we’re not used to have our home disturbed, and the house turned upside-down, as it was last night. I’m one that thinks it a duty, where people have a nice house and plenty to do with, to have your friends from time to time. But it’s a great trouble both before and after. Not a servant in this house was in their bed till long past twelve o’clock at night; and, poor things, we could not be exacting this morning,” Joan added, apologetically. “Liddy, if Mr. Brotherton will not take anything, we will, maybe, better get ready to go.” “Do not hurry for me,” the young man said. He was quite at his ease talking to Philip Selby, whom it pleased his wife to see putting on mildly the air of a man of the world when any invasion came from that big place into the Fell-country. When they had gone to “put on their things,” young Brotherton made himself very agreeable to the master of the house. He spoke of my “cousins” as if he had known them all his life: though all the time there was a look of semi-amusement on his face. He had stumbled into a new life without knowing anything about it. The servants up till after twelve, which was spoken of with bated breath as a wonderful interruption of rule; the master and mistress, who “were not exacting” after that tremendous vigil; the freshness and sweetness of the rural place, all produced a great effect upon him. He thought it a kind of Arcadia, an Arcadia dashed with reminiscences of hot supper, and some vagaries of homely fashion which struck Brotherton as more amusing than all the similar vagaries which he had come across before. When the ladies came down again, Joan attired in a bonnet which was more striking in its colours and composition than was common, ready to drive her phaeton to the White House, and Lydia in her riding habit, his pleasure in the sunshiny expedition he was about to make was as great as his amusement in finding himself a member of the primitive society, almost of the family, which was so simple and so kind. He watched the packing of the phaeton with laughing eyes. Lydia’s box, containing her evening dress no doubt, was carefully fastened on behind, and in front, in the vacant seat, was a basket, in which there were a number of delicacies from the feast, which Mrs. Selby thought “Mother might like: or if she doesn’t care for them herself, it will always be a pleasure to give them away,” said Joan; “though you must not think, Mr. Brotherton, that I am forgetting our own poor folk. A little bit that is out of the