Changed quarters, you see, my Susie. It was so cold all June I thought we should be able to hold out until the end of the session at No. 18; but July came in flaming; so more for Mabel's sake than our own we've taken a pretty villa here at pretty Henley, for six weeks, and then we're off for Biarritz, where we mean to settle ourselves comfortably, and thence explore, at our leisure, all the lovely yet almost unknown near-by country. The grandpapa paternal has written begging that we'll leave Mabel, whom he calls "Tramp No. 3, and too small for the work," at Castle Starched-stiff-O; but Tramps 1 and 2 think they couldn't possibly fare on comfortably without that small golden head bobbing along beside them, up the hills and down the dales. Nurse is even more gypsyish than her master and mistress, and Mabel has spent the greater part of all her waking hours since she was two months old out of doors; so I think we shall always have in her the hardiest of small comrades. Miss Hedges goes with us, and we mean, she and I, to bring back between us the entire Basque country in our portfolios. "I'm thankful we're going to a region of picturesque men," says Ronayne, "for I think my lot in life likely to be a little less afflictive than it was last year. I don't much mind leading contrary minded horses up and down by the hour, coaxing suspicious or aggressive goats; I might even put another bull as savage as that fellow at Twickenham through his paces; but as to posing myself, in any possible fashion, even as a snoring shepherd, please to consider, ladies, that it's not down in our summer programme. "Talk of the miseries of a man with a literary wife! What are they, I should like to be told, beside those of the unlucky mortal who's married a 'fair artist,' and can never so much as yawn in peace again, without being perpetuated in the act?" "I had an eye to business when I married you, sir!" I retort. "You see you're a fine, tall, well-made animal, and since I own you, why should I go pay away my money for some other model who wouldn't be half so good-looking, and whom I couldn't frighten so well into minding me? Not pose indeed! Perhaps you would even choose to be bow-legged if so you could escape doing your duty? And I think you're maliciously trying to get stout. In our rides lately, I notice you puff a good deal if we have a bit of a race, and you're really getting a quite perceptible little bulge!"