He made a sound exactly like the word “damnation” as he fell, but he didn’t so much get up as bounce up, apparently in the brightest of tempers, and laughed, held out two earthy hands for sympathy with a mock rueful grimace, and went on, earthy-green at the knees and a little more carefully towards the house. Clarence, having halted to drink deep satisfaction from this disaster, made his way along a nearly parallel path towards the kitchen, leaving his lady to follow as she chose to the house. “_You’ll_ take a cup of tea?” called Mr. Brumley. “Oh! _I’ll_ take a cup all right,” said Clarence in the kindly voice of one who addresses an amusing inferior.... Mrs. Rabbit had already got the tea-things out upon the cane table in the pretty verandah, and took it ill that she should be supposed not to have thought of these preparations. Mr. Brumley disappeared for a few minutes into the house. He returned with a conscious relief on his face, clean hands, brushed knees, and his boots securely laced. He found Lady Harman already pouring out tea. “You see,” she said, to excuse this pleasant enterprise on her part, “my husband has to be met at the station with the car.... And of course he has no idea——” She left what it was of which Sir Isaac had no idea to the groping speculations of Mr. Brumley. §4 That evening Mr. Brumley was quite unable to work. His mind was full of this beautiful dark lady who had come so unexpectedly into his world. Perhaps there are such things as premonitions. At any rate he had an altogether disproportionate sense of the significance of the afternoon’s adventure,—which after all was a very small adventure indeed. A mere talk. His mind refused to leave her, her black furry slenderness, her dark trustful eyes, the sweet firmness of her perfect lips, her appealing simplicity that was yet somehow compatible with the completest self-possession. He went over the incident of the board again and again, scraping his memory for any lurking crumb of detail as a starving man might scrape an insufficient plate. Her dignity, her gracious frank forgiveness; no queen alive in these days could have touched her.... But it wasn’t a mere elaborate admiration. There was something about her, about the quality of their meeting.