'I will arrange all that presently, Hazel. Meanwhile I am very sorry I cannot go along to help you fill those trunks; but I have several people to see and less pleasant work to do. We'll get some of this business over, and then we'll play. Take a carriage, and Byrom shall wait upon you.' 'I do not want Byrom. He is not used to me. And perhaps I may walk.' 'Byrom is used to me,' said Dane significantly. 'Proof positive of my two propositions,' said Hazel with a laugh. 'Waiting on me, is bewildering work to a new hand.' 'If I give it him in charge, he will do it well. Byrom has a head.' 'But I do not want to be given in charge. Have not I a head too?' Rollo laughed at her, and remarked that it was 'one he was bound to take care of.' 'So am I, I should hope,' said Hazel. 'What do you suppose I shall do with it—or with myself generally—that you call out a special detail of police?' 'Did Mr. Falkirk let you go about by yourself?' 'Always! At least, so far as he was concerned,' said Hazel correcting herself. 'I warned you what you were to expect,' said Rollo lightly. But then they came to the breakfast table, and something else was talked of. When the meal was over, and he was about going, bending down by her chair, he asked, 'What time will you have the carriage?' 'No time,' said Hazel. 'I have decided to walk.' 'I want you to take a carriage and let Byrom attend you—the sidewalks are in a state of glare ice this morning.' 'I am sure-footed.' 'I am glad of it,' said Rollo half laughing. 'What hour shall I say?' 'Why none!' said Hazel emphatically, with a passing thought of wonder at his obtuseness, though at the moment she was deep in her notebook. 'None, thank you.' Rollo's eyes sparkled, as he stood behind her, and his lips twitched. 'Is that the way you used to handle Mr. Falkirk, when he expressed his wishes about some point of your action?' 'Mr. Falkirk was indulged with a variety of ways.' 'Have you got a variety in store for me?' 'For any deserving object—I am extremely impartial,' said Hazel turning a leaf. 'Won't you give me another variety then, this morning?' said he softly. 'Because I am not going to let you go out on foot to-day, Hazel.' 'Not _let_ me?—' Hazel repeated, looking round from her notebook now to ask the question. There was no explanation in the face that confronted her, nor any consciousness of having said anything that needed it. Hazel looked at him for a second, open-eyed. 'What can you possibly mean?' she said. 'If it means interference with your pleasure, I am sorry.' Probably something in face and figure made this reply more definite than the words, for Wych Hazel's face waked up. 'But it does!' she said. 'I told you so at first.' 'It would interfere with mine very much, to have you go as you proposed.'