I was too ill to resist, and she led me to my room and tucked me up comfortably. 'Now,' she said, 'this headache wants peace of mind to cure it; I know the kind. You can't get peace for thinking about Mrs. MacGill. I'm going to take her off your mind for the afternoon--it's time I tried companioning--no girl knows when she may need to earn a living. You won't know your Mrs. MacGill when you get her again! I'll dress her up and walk her out, and humour her.' She bent down and kissed me as she spoke. It was the sweetest kiss! Her face is like a peach to feel, and her clothes have a delicious scent of violets. Somehow all my troubles seemed to smooth out. She rustled away in her silk-lined skirts, and I fell into a much-needed sleep, feeling that all would be well. I was mistaken, however. All did not go well, but on the contrary something very unfortunate happened while I was sleeping so quietly. It must have been about four o'clock when I was wakened by Virginia coming into my room again. She looked a little ruffled and pale. 'I've brought Mrs. MacGill back to you, Miss Evesham,' she said, 'but it's thanks to Sir Archibald, not to me. She will tell you all about it.' With that Mrs. MacGill came tottering into the room, plumped down upon the edge of my bed, and began a breathless, incoherent story in which wild ponies, stampedes, lanes, Sir Archibald, and herself were all mixed up together. 'Did he really save you from a bad accident?' I asked Virginia, for it was impossible to make out anything from Mrs. MacGill. Virginia nodded. 'He did, Cecilia, and I like him,' she said. 'Oh ho!' I thought. 'Is it possible that I am going to be mixed up in a romance? She likes him, does she? Very good; we shall see.' And then, because the world always appears a neutral-tinted place to me, without high lights of any kind, I rebuked myself for imagining that anything lively could ever come my way. 'I couldn't even look on at anything romantic nowadays,' I thought, 'I doubt if there _is_ such a thing as romance; it's just a figment of youth. Come, Mrs. MacGill, I'll find your knitting for you,' I said; 'that will compose you better than anything else.' IV VIRGINIA POMEROY THE GREY TOR INN We had rather a nice half-hour at Little Widger to-day, Sir Archibald and I. Of course we were walking. It is still incomprehensible to me, the comfort, the pleasure even, these people get out of the simple use of their legs. We passed Wishtcot and Wildycombe and then came upon Little Widger, not having known of its existence. The tiny hamlet straggles down a side hill and turns a corner, to terminate in the village inn, quaintly named 'The Mug o' Cider.' An acacia laden with yellow tassels hangs over the stone gate, purple and white lilacs burst through the hedges, and there is a cob-and-thatch cottage, with a dazzling white hawthorn in front of it and a black pig nosing at the gate.