First marched old James, leading the Ilsa’s horse, with Menzies-Legh beside him, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, her head wrapped up very curiously in yards and yards of some transparent fluttering stuff of a most unpractically feminine nature and her hand grasping a walking stick of a most aggressively masculine one, marched behind, giving me who followed (to my surprise I found it was expected of me that far from sitting as I had intended to do inside our caravan I should trudge along leading our horse) much unneeded and unasked-for advice. Her absurd head arrangement, which I afterward learned was called a motor veil, prevented my seeing anything except egregiously long eyelashes and the tip of an inquiring and strange to say not over aristocratic nose--Edelgard’s, true to its many ancestors, is purest hook. Taller and gaunter than ever in her straight up and down sort of costume, she stalked beside me her head on a level with mine (and I am by no means a short man), telling me what I ought to do and what I ought not to do in the matter of leading a horse; and when she had done that _ad nauseam_, _ad libitum_, and _ad infinitum_ (I believe I have forgotten nothing at all of my classics) she turned to my peaceful wife sitting on the Elsa’s platform and announced that if she stayed up there she would probably soon be sorry. * * * * * In another moment Edelgard was sorry, for unfortunately my horse had had either too many oats or not enough exercise, and the instant the first van had lumbered through the gate and out of sight round the corner to the left he made a sudden and terrifying attempt to follow it at a gallop. Those who know caravans know that they must never gallop: not, that is, if the contents are to remain unbroken and the occupants unbruised. They also know that no gate is more than exactly wide enough to admit of their passing through it, and that unless the passing through is calculated and carried out to a nicety the caravan that emerges will not be the caravan that went in. Providence that first evening was on my side, for I never got through any subsequent gate with an equal neatness. My heart had barely time to leap into my mouth before we were through and out in the road, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, catching hold of the bridle, was able to prevent the beast’s doing what was clearly in his eye, turn round to the left after his mate with a sharpness that would have snapped the Elsa in two. Edelgard, rather pale, scrambled down. The sight of our caravan heaving over inequalities or lurching as it was turned round was a sight I never learned to look at without a tightened feeling about the throat. Anxiously I asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when the horse, having reached the rear of the Ilsa, had settled down again, what would happen if I did not get through the next gate with an equal skill. “Everything may happen,” said she, “from the scraping off of the varnish to the scraping off of a wheel.