It was nearly five o’clock when we turned into the highway west of the Bluffs.  We had gone but a few rods when a great clanking of chains and jar of wheels sounded behind.  As I stretched out to see what was coming, a horn sounded merrily.

“A coaching party,” said father.  “I will turn out of the road, for there is a treacherous pitch on the other side, and for me to let them topple into the ditch might be profitable, but hardly professional.”

We had barely turned into low bushes when the stage came alongside.  The horses dropped back to a walk, as they passed, for it was a decided up grade for thirty yards, so that we had a good chance to view both equipage and occupants.  To my surprise I saw that the coach was the Jenks-Smith’s.  I did not know they had returned from the trip abroad where they had been making their annual visit to repair the finances of their son-in-law.

Monty Bell was driving, with Mrs. Jenks-Smith at his side.  The robust Lady of the Bluffs, evidently having some difficulty in keeping her balance, was clutching the side bar desperately.  She was dressed in bright-figured hues from top to toe, her filmy hat had lurched over one eye, and all together she looked like a Chinese lantern, or a balloon inflated for its rise but entangled in its moorings.

Jenks-Smith sat behind, with Mrs. Latham and a very pretty young girl as seatmates, while behind them came a giggling bevy of young people and the grooms,—­Sylvia being of course absent.

Mrs. Latham was clad in pale violet embroidered with iris in deeper tones, her wide hat was irreproachably poised, her veil draped gracefully, her white parasol, also embroidered with iris, held at as becoming an angle, and her corsage violets as fresh as if she was but starting out, while in fact the party must have driven up from New York since morning.

They did not even glance at the gray horses which had been drawn aside to give them right of way, much less acknowledge the courtesy, but clanked by in a cloud of misty April dust.

“What a contrast between his mother and hers,” I said unconsciously, half aloud.

“Which?  Whose?  I did not quite catch the connection of that remark,” said father, turning toward me with his quizzical expression, for a standing joke of both father and Evan was to thus trip me up when I uttered fragmentary sentences, as was frequently the case, taking it for granted, they said, that they either dreamed the connection or could read my thoughts.

“I meant what a great contrast there is between Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Latham,” I explained, at once realizing that there was really no sense in the comparison outside of my own irrepressibly romantic imagination, even before father said:—­

“And why, pray, should they not be different?  Under the circumstances it would be very strange if they were not.  And where does the his and her come in?  Barbara, child, I think you are ’dreaming pussy willows,’ as you used to say you did in springtime, when you were a very little girl.”