"Annie, you shall be the first to congratulate me--but it's a secret; you mustn't tell a soul." Annie looked back with shining eyes. "I'm engaged, too," she whispered. "You dear!" said Miss Ethel, and she put her arm around her and kissed her. Peter and Mr. Harry stood a moment eyeing each other awkwardly, then they reached out across the gulf that separated them and shook hands. X A PARABLE FOR HUSBANDS Blue Gipsy's filly had broken two pairs of shafts, kicked a hole through a dash-board, and endeavoured to take a fence carriage and all, in a fixed determination not to become a harness-horse. It was evident that she had chosen her career and meant to stick to it. "Break her to the shafts if you have to half kill her," Mr. Harry had said, but there were some things that Mr. Harry did not understand so well as Peter. "Where's the use in spoilin' a good jumper for the sake o' makin' a poor drivin' horse?" Peter had asked the trainer, and he had added that the master was talking through his hat. Peter had already explained the matter to Mr. Harry, but Mr. Harry was very much like the filly; when he had made up his mind he did not like to change. Peter decided to talk it over once more, however, before he risked another groom. The first groom had dislocated his shoulder, and he refused to have any further intercourse with Blue Gypsy's filly. Poor Peter felt himself growing old under the weight of his responsibilities. Three years before he had been a care-free groom at Willowbrook; now, since Miss Ethel had married Mr. Harry, he was coachman at Jasper Place, with seven horses and three men under him. Occasionally he gazed rather wistfully across the meadow to where the Willowbrook stables showed a red blur through the gray-green trees. He had served there eleven years as stable-boy and groom, and though he had more than once tasted the end of a strap under Joe's vigorous dominion, it had been a happily irresponsible life. Not that he wished the old time back, for that would mean that there would be no Annie waiting supper for him at night in the coachman's cottage, but he did wish sometimes that Mr. Harry had a little more common sense about managing horses. Blue Gypsy's filly trotting peaceably between shafts! It was in her blood to jump, and jump she would; you might as well train a bull pup to grow up a Japanese poodle and sleep on a satin cushion. Peter, pondering the matter, strolled over to the kitchen and inquired of Ellen where Mr. Harry was. Mr. Harry was in the library, she said, and Peter could go right through. The carpet was soft, and he made no noise. He did not mean to listen, but he had almost reached the library door before he realized and then he stood still, partly because he was dazed, and partly because he was interested.