He did not finish what was in his mind, but the next morning, immediately after breakfast, he pretended that he had an errand in the village, and started off alone, preferring to walk, he said, when Howard suggested the carriage, and also declining Howard's company, which was rather faintly offered. Howard never cared to walk when he could drive, and then he had a plan which he could better carry out with Jack away than with him present. He was more interested in Eloise than he would like to confess to Jack or any one, and he found himself thinking of her constantly and wishing he could do something to make her more comfortable than he was sure she could be even in Mrs. Biggs's parlor. He was very fastidious in his tastes, and Mrs. Biggs's parlor was a horror to him, with its black hair-cloth furniture, and especially the rocker in which Eloise sat, and out of which she seemed in danger of slipping every time she bent forward. He had thought of his uncle's sea chair on the occasion of his first call, and now he resolved to send it in Amy's name. Something had warned him that in Eloise's make-up there was a pride equal to his own. She might receive favors from Amy, as she had the hat, and although a chair would seem a good deal perhaps, he would explain it on the ground of Amy's great desire to help some one when he saw her. He'd send it at once, he thought, and he wrote a note, saying, "Miss Smith: Please accept this sea chair with the compliments of Mrs. Amy, who thinks you will find it more comfortable than the hair-cloth rocker, of which I told her. As she seldom writes to any one, she has made me her amanuensis, and hopes you will excuse her. Yours, very truly, Howard Crompton, for Mrs. Amy." It was a lie, Howard knew, but that did not trouble him, and calling Sam, he bade him take it with the chair and a bunch of hothouse roses to Miss Smith. Sam took the chair and the note and the roses, and started for Mrs. Biggs's, stopping in the avenue to look at the shrub where Brutus had received the gouge in his shoulder, and stopping again at a point where some bits of glass from the broken window of the carriage were lying. All this took time, so that it was after eleven when he at last reached Mrs. Biggs's gate, and met a drayman coming in an opposite direction with Jack Harcourt on the cart, seated in a very handsome wheel chair, and looking supremely happy.