those two gorgeous-backed men-servants. How invitingly the nuts nod their brown faces at me from the hedge! I should be happier walking in the road with Jack, free to pick them, than perched up here with nothing to do. I wonder if I dare ask one of those men to gather me some? I cannot call them, for I do not know their names; so I uplift my voice in a "hem!" which I delivered point blank at the middle of the footman's back.
"Did you speak, miss?" he asked, touching his hat and turning.
"A—not exactly," I say; "but I want some of those nuts, can you pick them for me?"
Certainly, miss," and in another minute he is in the road, and scrambling up the hedge; his long coat hampers his legs, the powder flies from his hair to his shoulders, but he is a man "for a' that"; and finally, he brings me my nuts with an unruffled countenance. I fancy I hear him saying later in the servants' hall, "She's low, she is; she ate nuts out in the carriage, and cracked them with her own teeth, she did."
And now we have passed through the lodge gates, and are rolling along between the avenue of tall trees that mark the approach to Flytton. It is a beautiful old place, and a footman ushers me through stately passages and ante-rooms to the drawing-room, in which I have some difficulty in discovering Lady Flytton—so little, so wizen, so shrunken is she. I make her out at last in a far corner. I think she is asleep, but she opens her eyes suddenly, and bids me welcome very kindly, desiring the footman to bring white wine and grapes; while I eat the latter she chatters away, with the garrulity of old age, of mother, who was, she says, a beautiful young woman;" of everything, in short, that her wandering thoughts hit upon. Presently she leans back in her chair, and without the smallest sign or word, goes soundly to sleep. I am just wondering what I am going to do with myself, and thinking how lively it will be here, when the glass-door leading to the garden
