That part of the ancient Persians’ simple system of education for their sons which bore upon the management of a horse (to shoot straight, manage a horse, and tell the truth, was the complete curriculum) is being missed to-day. I don’t pretend that Rose could manage one in the full sense of the word, but she had the qualities which such mastery demands—courage and confidence, mental quickness and sympathy, and a steady hand. It is not to a country’s good when the horse disappears and oil and metal take its place, for the management of a car is far less educative. To-day, roughly speaking, only farm-boys and stable-lads are being taught as the wise old Persians would wish. * * * * * Then there were the neighbours: the Rector and his family; Colonel Westerley and his wife; the old people at the post office, and the butcher and the baker, and, what is more to the point, the butcher’s and the baker’s errand boys. Rose was on the best of terms with all of these. Some were too anxious to share in her upbringing. I exempt the butcher’s boy and the baker’s boy from this charge, and the old couple at the post office are honourably acquitted—or as honourably as persons can be who repeat telegrams to the whole village—but the Rector’s wife longed for Rose to join her two daughters in their lessons, and Mrs. Westerley was consumed by a desire to transform her into a pianist. The rectory offer I declined, but Rose sat for a while at Mrs. Westerley’s instrument, until it was decided that whatever genius she might possess lay in some other direction than music. Mrs. Westerley, whose garden marched with mine on the other side, we could do without; but Colonel Westerley was one of Rose’s special intimates. And when I say Colonel, I mean Colonel. I mean an elderly upright man with a white moustache and courtly manners, who took the chair at meetings, and played a good game of croquet, and acted as sidesman on Sundays; the kind of army aristocrat who, by presenting the plate with a certain military éclat, made it a double privilege for the worshipper to drop in a shilling for God. I have to explain and amplify in this way because now, after the War, when I am writing, the word Colonel means nothing of the kind. Mere youths are colonels. A major called on me yesterday with a smooth-shaven white face and a baggy umbrella, to ask for my signature to some teetotal appeal. If I had trodden on his toe he would very likely have said that it was his fault. The word “Gad” has quitted the language.