So he recommended air and exercise--driving exercise by preference. 'I used to like the donkey-chairs at Tunbridge Wells,' Mrs. MacGill responded, 'but horses go so rapidly.' However, after the doctor had gone she began to consider his advice. 'Shall I go to the stables and arrange for you to have a drive this afternoon?' I asked. She demurred, for she never can make up her mind about anything. 'I can't decide just now,' she hesitated. 'I'll think it over.' I took up the guide-book, and was allowed to read its thrilling pages for some ten minutes. Then Mrs. MacGill called me again. 'Perhaps if you go and select a _very_ quiet horse we might have a drive in the afternoon,' she said. I went and saw the horse, and arranged for the drive, then returned to tell Mrs. MacGill of the arrangement. She was not pleased. Had I said that _perhaps_ we would drive out at three o'clock, it would have been more to her mind. 'Go back and tell the man that perhaps we'll go,' she said. 'But perhaps some one else will take out the horse, in that case,' I suggested, cross and weary with her fidgeting. All the rest of the forenoon was one long vacillation: she would go, or she would not go; it would rain, or it would not rain; she would countermand the carriage or she would order it. But by three o'clock the sun was shining, so I got her bonneted and cloaked and led her down to the hall. The motor had come round at the same moment with our carriage. Its owner was looking it over before he made a start, and I was not surprised to see that Miss Virginia Pomeroy was also at the door, and that she showed great interest in the tires of the motor. Had I been that young man I must have asked her to drive with me there and then, she looked so delightful; but he is rather a phlegmatic creature, surely, for he didn't seem to think of it. Just as we were preparing to step into the carriage, the motor gave out a great puff of steam, and the horse in our vehicle sprang up in the shafts and took a shy to one side. It was easily quieted down, but of course the incident was more than enough for Mrs. MacGill. 'Take it away,' she said to the driver. 'I won't endanger my life with such an animal--brown horses are always wild, and so are black ones.' It was vain for me to argue; she just turned away and walked upstairs again, I following to take off her bonnet and cloak, and supply her again with her knitting. So there was an end of the carriage exercise, it seemed. But there's a curious boring pertinacity in the creature, for after we had sat in silence for about ten minutes she remarked:-- 'Cecilia, the doctor _said_ I was to have carriage exercise--Don't you think I could get a donkey-chair?' 'No,' I replied quite curtly. 'Donkey-chairs do not grow on Dartmoor.' She never saw that I was provoked, and perhaps it was just as well.