It is a hot afternoon; after all, I think that miladi has the best of it, sitting in a garden-chair under a tulip tree, eating apricots. The deer, with dappled sides and heavy-horned heads, are herding about the rough, knotted feet of the great trees that stand here and there in solitary kingship about the park. They spread their ancient, outstretched arms between earth and heaven, and man and beast rejoice in the shade thereof. The dust lies a hand-breadth thick upon the road; the nuts in the hedgerow, the half-ripe blackberries, the rag-wort in the grass--all merge their distinctive colours in one dirty-white mask. "Is she going to kick, do you think?" asks Esther, in a mysterious whisper of Miss Blessington, across Sir Thomas. "Does not it mean that when they put their ears back?" "I don't think you need be alarmed," answers Constance, with politely-veiled contempt; "it is only the flies that tease her." The animal that inspires such alarm in Esther's mind, is a slight, showy thing, nearly thoroughbred; a capital lady's park hack. It is quiet enough, only that the quietness of a young, oats-fed mare, and of an antediluvian Welsh pony blown out with grass, are two different things. She is sidling along now, half across the road, coquetting with her own shadow. "Oh, Sir Thomas!" (in an agonised voice) "why does not she walk straight? Why does she go like a crab?" "Pooh!" answers Sir Thomas, in his hard, loud voice; "it's only play!" "If I'm upset, I don't much care whether it is in play or earnest," rejoins Esther, ruefully. The glare from the road, the dust and the midges, make people keep their eyes closed as nearly as they can: so that it is not till they are close upon him that they perceive that the man who is dawdling along to meet them on a stout, grey cob, with his hat and coat and whiskers nearly as white as any miller's, is St. John. He looks rather annoyed at the rencontre. "I have been over to Melford, Sir Thomas, to see that pointer of Burleigh's. It will not do at all; it's not half broken." "You had better turn back with us, St. John," suggests Constance, graciously. "No, thanks; much too hot!" "_Au revoir_, then," nodding her head and her tall hat, and about a million flies that are promenading on it, gracefully. Esther's fears vanish. "Three is no company," she says in a low voice, and making rather a plaintive little face as he passes her. Drawn by the magnet that has succeeded in drawing to itself most things that it wished--viz., a woman's inviting eyes--he turns the cob's head sharp round. "But four is," he answers, with an eager smile, putting his horse alongside of hers. She was rather compunctious the moment she had said it. It is reversing the order of things--the woman after the man; "the haystack after the cow;" as the homely old proverb says. The road is broad, and for a little while they all four jog on abreast, as in a Roman chariot-race or a city omnibus--rather a dreary squadron.