For Willits's health after a few days of the sunshine of Kate's companionship had undergone so renovating a process that the sorrel horse now arrived at the porch almost every day, whereupon Kate's Joan would be led out, and the smiled-upon gentleman in English riding-boots and brown velvet jacket and our gracious lady in Lincoln green habit with wide hat and sweeping plume would mount their steeds and be lost among the pines.
Indeed, to be exact, half of Kate's time was now spent in the saddle, Willits riding beside her.

And with each day's outing a new and, to St.
George, a more disturbing intimacy appeared to be growing between them.
Now it was Willits's sister who had to be considered and especially invited to Wesley--a thin wisp of a woman with tortoise-shell sidecombs and bunches of dry curls, who always dressed in shiny black silk and whose only ornament was her mother's hair set in a breastpin; or it was his father by whom she must sit when he came over in his gig--a bluff, hearty man who generally wore a red waistcoat with big bone buttons and high boots with tassels in front.
This last confidential relation, when the manners and bearing of the elder man came under his notice, seemed to St.George the most unaccountable of all.

Departures from the established code always jarred upon him, and the gentleman in the red waistcoat and tasselled boots often wandered so far afield that he invariably set St.George's teeth on edge.

Although he had never met Kate before, he called her by her first name after the first ten minutes of their acquaintance--his son, he explained, having done nothing but sound her praises for the past two years, an excuse which carried no weight in gentleman George's mind because of its additional familiarity.

He had never dared, he knew, to extend that familiarity to Peggy--it had always been "Mrs.Coston" to her and it had always been "Mr.Coston" to Tom, and it was now "your Honor" or "judge" to the dispenser of justice.