While I was walking in the garden after dinner, Gibson came across from the stables and began hanging about. I had a presentiment as to what he wanted, and I nearly bolted back into the house. Susan had been quite enough for one day. But, although it was dusk, I could see his trouble sitting, so to speak, on Gibson’s shoulders. There was nothing for it but to face it out. "Good-evening, Gibson," I said. "Do you want to speak to me?" "I do, Ma’am," Gibson answered. His manner was perfectly respectful, but his tone was almost imperative. "What is the matter?" "You told me, Ma’am, I could have a holiday, beginning Monday. Hughes is well able now to look after the horses. If I couldn’t trust him, I wouldn’t go." "But, Gibson, we talked over all this on Tuesday, and it was settled you should go. Why do you want me to discuss it again?" Gibson looked awkward; shifted his cap from one hand to the other; shifted it back again. Suddenly he demanded bluntly: "Will you mind, Ma’am, if I go to France?" "To France?" I said, bewildered. "Why France?" Gibson floundered through an unconvincing explanation. He affected to have doubts as to the Future of the Horse. He declared that, until lately, he had clung to a belief that "these here motor-cars would die out, same as the bicycles did;" but, tardily and bitterly, he has changed his mind. It seems the Horse will not become extinct. There will always be a few horses in the country, just as there will always be a few bows and arrows. But the number of horse-owners in the near future as compared with the horse-owners of the near past is to be in pretty much the same proportion as the archery-club amateurs of to-day in comparison with the English bowmen at Crécy and Agincourt. Gibson didn’t put it exactly in this way, but his point is that the Horse, as the Psalmist says, is a vain thing for safety when a young man is looking well ahead for his bread and butter. Gibson wants to stay at Traxelby as long as I will keep him: but, "begging pardon, Ma’am, with a single lady one never knows," and therefore he thinks it is high time he should put himself in the way of qualifying as a chauffeur. Hence France. "You do right to improve yourself, Gibson," I said. "But why France? Nowadays you can learn to be a chauffeur far better in England." His face darkened. "Asking pardon, Ma’am," he said obstinately, "I have a fancy for learning in France." "Very well," I said. "It’s your holiday, and you can spend it wherever you like. If you can manage the language, go to France by all means." "Then you haven’t any objection, Ma’am?" "Why should I?" Gibson hesitated. Then he stammered: "I was afraid, Ma’am, that ... that me goin’ to France the same time as you, Ma’am, wouldn’t be ... I mean, it would look like taking a liberty." I perceived that Gibson, like many others of his class, conceives France as a territory about the size of the Isle of Wight, with Paris in the middle.