Madge, the look of anxiety already lifting from her smooth and comely face,--one sees that look here in many of the unemployed,--looks questioningly at Peter when I extend my invitation. I assure him that I need a man to look after the garden and the pony; at this Puck pricks up his ears and gives me a half glance. Yes, I have decided to have him, if I may, for my very own. There is a remote something in Peter's gait and bearing that suggests the soldier, but it is the soldier whose long leisure re-acts against the discipline. "But perhaps you were thinking of going to the war?" I ask. "No, Miss," said Peter, "I weren't." He spoke so emphatically that I may have raised my eyebrows; perhaps I shook my head. I shall be afraid of borrowing unconsciously some of the pony's gestures; these strong personalities always leave their impress. "War," said Peter firmly, "is against my principles. I am a socialist." "It's a fine way to keep from serving King and Country, being a socialist," said Madge unkindly. Madge is evidently not progressive. "My fellow man," said Peter, striking the gate post with a heavy fist, "is more to me than King or 'Ouse of Lords." "Or fellow woman, either," murmured Madge, thinking that I did not hear. From these advanced radical theories Madge and I turn back, as women will, to the old and homely needs of human life. She fingers her apron. "I'm sure, Miss, if the laundry could be put out----" "Yes." "And a charwoman for the rough scrubbing----" "Yes." "And if you wouldn't mind me knowing little about waiting at table----" "With but one person in the family, that isn't very complex," I say reassuringly. Don looks reproachfully at me; was I forgetting him? I watched Don to see how he would take them; his manner was perfection,--polite but distant, refusing any intimate advances, but refraining from growling. There was a certain approving condescension in his air, as if he thought they were quite well in their way. He never for a moment forgets that he is a gentleman's dog, and his flair for social distinctions is as fine as that of any of his fellow Oxford dons. That delicate snobbery showed to-day in his air of connoisseurship while he weighed the matter with daintily snuffing nose and then assumed an air of invitation to these two to come and keep their place. I was delighted when they said that they would come, and we trotted merrily home to the shining companionship of the hearth fire, flickering on pewter pots and copper pans as on my landlady's red cheeks; to the comfort--ah, that I, a twentieth-century American, dare confess it--of a feather bed!