And whether the days were happy or not, at any rate they were peacefully alike. Breakfast with the nurses, a morning or afternoon drive with Buck or a walk along the river bank or on Putney Heath, tea (if they drove) perhaps at Kingston, supper with the nurses again, and bed--that was the tale of them. She kept her promise to Chaff; several times he came to see her. Twice he met Buck. At these meetings the shade of the Honourable Emily almost visibly presided.... Chaff tried to talk of "Lives and Battles," Buck of the same--it was not for him to choose topics before his betters. And once, but once only, Buck brought Mrs. Buck, formerly Susan Emmidge, the chemist's servant at Mallard Bois. He hooked her up behind himself before they left Kingston, and Louie did her the same service at the end of the visit. For the rest, if Louie wanted to see her father's second wife she had to go to the Molyneux Arms to do so. II As the singer of "The Pilgrim of Love" Buck was known far and abroad up the Thames. It will be believed that he contrived to get an infinite personal pathos into the song; he also made of it, by means of those gratuitous aspirates, an affective athletic exercise in breathing. "No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave For the Pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----" As he closed his eyes at each soaring, the effect was as if he inwardly looked back on that remarkable pilgrimage of his own. Bidden to marry, he had married; bidden to unmarry and to marry again, he had done so; and at a word from Louie he would have taken up the pilgrimage once more. But while Buck exalted the Scarisbricks high above himself, so also he exalted himself high above all beneath him. He ruled the Molyneux Arms with a rod of iron. Only mediately and through him would the two barmaids have dared to address Louie; and his wife's position was altogether anomalous. It was only because Louie would have it so that she sat down to tea with them; and, what with her hooks and eyes and Buck's perpetual admonitions, there was little rest but the grave for her either. Buck subscribed to the _Almanack de Gotha_ and _Modern Society_; these were always to hand; but _The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette_, which he took in the way of business, was kept out of Louie's way. Mr. Mackie he would have torn from limb to limb. Far more royalist than the king was Buck; Radicalism was chaos, which word he pronounced "tchayoss." Of pugilism, save to Chaff, he never spoke. "God bless the Squire and his relations."