"A motor—better than a horse? Great Scott, no! What made you ask?" "Well, you drive about in a motor." "Oh, yes, the governor has a ripping car. And for getting about the country—real long trips, you know—they’re splendid. But of course, they don’t come under the same heading as horses at all." "I’ve been hoarding that up against you," she declared frankly. "Have you?" He looked amused. "It seems so queer to me—I never look upon them in the same light at all." "Motors are horrid things." "I don’t think so." "The dust—the smell—" "Don’t affect you when you’re in one." "But they affect other people." He shrugged his shoulders. "They’re real selfish things!" he laughed. "When you’re motoring, you don’t care a hang for that sort of thing. You just go tearing along—monarch of all you survey." "And—dogs?" He smiled. "I’ve never run over one yet, unless they die like martyrs without a groan." "Well, they may be _useful_," she conceded. "But the feeling can’t be anything like the glory of a gallop—a canter—" "No, it isn’t. Nothing can come anywhere near a decent mount, and a good stretch of country before you." They fell silent for a while. Nell, furtively studying him, as he sat forward in his chair looking into the fire, broke out at last. "Mr. Lancaster, you’ve no business to look so—so pale—so done up!" He flushed. "Do I? Overwork, perhaps." She bent toward him; she said softly:— "Do you mind my noticing? Denis always lets me fuss if he cuts his finger or anything like that." "I was riding this morning," the words seemed to be dragged from him against his will; "I expect I overdid it." Her pretty eyes opened wide. "You needn’t think I’m just a weakly idiot," he burst out angrily. "I don’t. You’ve had an illness?" He nodded. She sighed suggestively. He looked at her, and smiled unwillingly. "It was nearly six months ago now." He frowned and paused. "Accident—horse had to be shot." "Oh!" She waited. "It was a beastly motor omnibus—poor old Pilot bolted. We had a fight—I’d nearly got him under—and a fool of a boy came tearing round a corner yelling and waving a hoop in the air. Pilot bolted straight into a shop window—had to be shot." She shivered. "And you?" "Oh, I broke a leg, and cracked my skull, and broke a few ribs. Went to bed for a while. Then got up—went out for a walk—got drenched through—pneumonia and pleurisy—eternal bed. Hard lines, wasn’t it?" "Who nursed you?" "Two of ’em. When I was a bit off my head you wouldn’t believe how they worried me. You see, one had a red face and a blaze of red-gold hair, and the other had a great, pale moon-face and black hair, and the red-gold one was the night nurse, and the pale one the day nurse. I got sort of mixed and thought one was the sun and the other the moon, and I yelled and shouted and made such a row that they had to change! I couldn’t stand having the sun blazing at night, and the moon by day. Funny, wasn’t it?"