master on the move, and quickly trotted after him across the lawn to the river.  Here, the sole occupant of the shining stream was a maternal swan, white as a cloud on the summit of Mont Blanc, floating in stately ease up and down the water, carrying her young brood of cygnets on her back, under the snowy curve of her arching wings.  Walden unchained the punt and sprang into it,—­Nebbie dutifully following,—­and then divested himself of his coat.  He was just about to take the punting pole in hand, when Bainton’s figure suddenly emerged from the shrubbery.

“Off on the wild wave, Passon, are ye?” he observed,—­“Well, it’s a fine day for it!  M’appen you ain’t seen the corpses of four rats anywhere around?  No?  Then I ‘spect their lovin’ relations must ha’ been an’ ate ’em up, which may be their pertikler way of doin’ funerals.  I nabbed ’em all last night in the new traps of my own invention. mebbe the lilies will be all the better for their loss.  I’ll be catchin’ some more this evenin’.  Lord; Passon, if you was to ‘old out offers of a shillin’ a head, the rats ’ud be gone in no time,—­an’ the lilies too!”

Walden absorbed in getting his punt out, only smiled and nodded acquiescingly.

“The train must ha’ been poonctual,” went on Bainton, staring stolidly at the shining water.  “Amazin’ poonctual for once in its life.  For a one ‘oss fly, goin’ at a one ’oss fly pace, ‘as jes’ passed through the village, and is jiggitin’ up to the Manor this very minute.  I s’pose Miss Vancourt’s inside it.”

Walden paused,—­punt-pole in hand.

“Yes, I suppose she is,” he rejoined.  “Come to me at six o’clock, Bainton.  I shall want you.”

“Very good, sir!”

The pole splashed in the water,—­the punt shot out into the clear stream,—­Nebbie gave two short barks, as was his custom when he found himself being helplessly borne away from dry land,—­and in a few seconds Walden had disappeared round one of the bends of the river.  Bainton stood ruminating for a minute.

“Jest a one ‘oss fly, goin’ at a one ’oss fly pace!” he repeated, slowly;—­“It’s a cheap way of comin’ ’ome to one’s father’s ’Alls—­ jest in a one ‘oss fly!  She might ha’ ordered a kerridge an’ pair by telegram, an’ dashed it up in fine style, but a one ’oss fly!  It do take the edge off a ’ome-comin’!—­it do reely now.”

And with a kind of short grunt at the vanity and disappointment of human expectations, he went his way to the kitchen garden, there to ‘chew the cud of sweet and bitter memory’ over the asparagus beds, which were in a highly promising condition.

VIII

The one-horse fly, going at a one-horse fly pace, had made its way with comfortable jaunting slowness from Riversford to St. Rest, its stout, heavy-faced driver being altogether unconscious that his fare was no less a personage than Miss Vancourt, the lady of the Manor.  When a small, girlish person, clad in a plain, close-fitting garb of navy-blue serge, and wearing a simple yet coquettish dark straw hat to match, accosted him at the Riversford railway station with a brief, ‘Cab, please,’ and sprang into his vehicle, he was a trifle sulky at being engaged in such a haphazard fashion by an apparently insignificant young female who had no luggage, not so much as a handbag.