"Meaning the very thing--please get me a form, oh, lots of them. I must wire to Griggs. Don't let the train go until I've done it. Whatever should I do if no one met me?" "I'll stop it if I have to hold the engine myself. Now, miss, you take these 'ere. That's the name of a Spring 'andicap winner on one of them--you scrat it out and write your own telegram. We ain't agoin' to have you out in the cornfields at that time of night, I know. Just write away and don't you flurry yourself." Etta needed no pressing invitation. She wrote two telegrams as fast as her eager fingers could set down the messages--one to Fletcher, the coachman at the Hall, one to Griggs, the butler, who would be the most astonished man in all Derbyshire that night when he read it. These the porter gathered up together with a liberal monetary provision to frank them, and the train was just about to start when who should appear again but the white-haired nonagenarian, grumbling and shuffling and plainly seeking a carriage, despite the fact that he had been lately seated in it. "Why, here's old nannygoat broke out again," cried the astonished porter, and running after him he exclaimed: "Here, grandfather, train goin', comprenny, inside oh, chucky walkey--now then, smart, or I'm blowed if I don't put you in the lorst luggage horfiss." They bundled the old man into a carriage; the engine whistled, the train steamed majestically from the station. "Good-by, London!" said Etta, sinking back upon the cushions with tears in her eyes. But the far from docile old gentleman, who had been treated so unceremoniously, did not weep at all. "She's going to Melbourne Hall," he kept repeating with a chuckle; "if the telegrams mean anything, they mean that." By which it is clear that the old scoundrel had read Etta's messages which the ever-obliging porter carried to the telegraph office for her. CHAPTER VIII LADY EVELYN RETURNS Mr. Griggs, the butler at Melbourne Hall, had just fallen asleep after a second glass of his master's unimpeachable port, when a footman knocked softly upon the door of his pantry and informed him that he was the proud owner of a telegram. "For you, sir, and the boy's a-waitin' for a hanswer." Mr. Griggs, who had been dreaming of a rich uncle in Australia, and of the fortune this worthy had bequeathed to him (by which he would set up a public-house in Moretown and acquire a masterly reputation), murmured softly, "No jugs in the private bar," and awoke immediately in that state of irritable stupor which even a moderate allowance (and Mr. Griggs' glasses were true bumpers) of ancient port may provoke. "Whatever do you want, comin' creeping in here like a fox with the gout?" he asked angrily; "is the 'ouse on fire or is Partigan took with the hysterics? Whatever is it, James?"