"I? I a.s.sure you," he said, turning a gay face toward her, "I think it positively the most exciting town I ever saw in my life. But then, of course, I 've had unusual privileges. What is much more important--what do you think of it?"

"Of course, I love it. My mother went here to boarding school a great, great many years ago. No, not that--some years ago. She fell in love with the place on account of the scenery, and the air, which she says is fresher than you can get in other places. Personally, I believe that the same quality can be had elsewhere, but she says not at all. So when we--left New York, nothing would do for her but to come straight here."

"But don't you find it a little dull?"

"Dull! Why," she cried, after a moment, "you talk exactly the way she does."

"May I offer you an olive?"

She took it daintily in her fingers, bit it and resumed: "I suppose your metropolitan idea is that a person would be buried alive in Hunston?"

A sunny shaft broke in from without and became entangled with her hair, which was in some ways so curiously like it. McTosh, whose eye was everywhere, promptly lowered a shade two inches--the one blunder he made that day.

"Isn't it?"

"That would depend altogether on the person."

"Me."

"I do think so, decidedly."

"Really you and my mother would be very congenial."

"McTosh, the bread," said Peter's cool voice.

Mrs. Marne, who had been interested by Peter's taciturnity and fascinated by his waistcoat, had been leading that ordinarily masterful man something of a conversational dance. Detached for the moment by his demand for provender, she called across the table: "Mary, I herewith invite you to attend the Culture Club meeting at four o'clock this afternoon, to lead the applause for my paper on Immanuel Kant. Pinky wrote it and--"

"Before any court in the land," said Hare, lifting his glance above squab _en ca.s.serole_, "I am prepared to establish my innocence of this charge."

"If he positively will not take no for an answer," continued Mrs. Marne, "you may bring John Richards along. No claret, thank you, Mr. Maginnis.

Men, it is true, are not admitted to the sacred mysteries, but I will arrange to have him seated on the piazza where he may eavesdrop the whole thing through the long French window."

"Unfortunately," said Mary, "he has to go to Albany this afternoon, I believe."

"To resume our conversation, Mrs. Marne," said Peter.

"I shouldn't if I were you," Hare recommended. "If memory serves, it was hardly worth it. Why not, instead, permit me to tell the story of the seven fat men of Kilgore?"

McTosh, of the gum-shoe tread, shuffled courses dextrously. An under-steward a.s.sisted in the presentation of the viands, another manipulated dishes in the hidden precincts of the pantry. The service was swift and noiseless, but not more so than the pa.s.sage of time. The hands of the little clock fastened against the forward bulkhead already stood at quarter after three.

Mary's eyes, which had been resting on the candidate, turned back to Varney, and they were shining. "Seriously, Mr. Varney," she said in a lowered voice--"how could any one possibly be buried in a town where Mr. Hare is?"

"Mr. Hare?"

She nodded. "Because he is so _alive_! Why just to live in the same town with him is an inspiration. To be friends with him--well, that is all you ever need to keep from feeling buried alive! He isn't listening, is he?"

"No," said Varney, "he is, I believe, telling the story of the seven fat men of Kilgore."

"If you wish to hand bouquets to Pinky for a while," called Mrs. Marne, aside, "I will see that you are not disturbed, Mary."

"Thank you, Elsie, but it's your sisterly duty to listen to the story.

Mr. Hare," she presently went on, to Varney, "had a great career ahead of him in New York--Judge Prentiss told me so--and he kicked it over without a quiver and came up here where there isn't any glitter or fireworks, but only plain hard work. Politics is only an incident with him. No one will ever understand all that he has done for Hunston, without any thought of return--working with all his heart and his head and his hands."

"Ha! Ha!" said Peter down the table. "That reminds me--"

"You have known him a long time, I suppose?" asked Varney.

"Yes," she laughed, "but he has known me longer--ever since I was a very little girl. That is why he calls me by my name, which gives him a great moral advantage. I call him Mister because I didn't know him when he was a very little boy. I have figured it all out, and I couldn't have, because he was thirteen when I was born. Besides, you can't begin to know people till you have reached a certain age. Can you?"

"Not to say know, I should think."

"Say six," said Miss Carstairs. "That's liberal, I think. Well, he was nineteen _then_, and I never even saw him till seven years afterwards, anyway. That made him twenty-six, which was much too late. Now he says that I should call him by his name, but of course I'm not going to do it."

"It is hard to change an old habit in a thing like that."

"Oh, I don't mind the hardness of it. But whoever heard of calling a Mayor by his first name? Call a Mayor Pinky! The thought is ridiculous.

Isn't it, Mr. Hare?"

But Hare was engrossed with a conversation of his own, now turned upon economic lines.

"Everything in the world that goes up must come down," he was saying didactically, "except prices. They alone defy the laws of gravity."

Peter challenged the aphorism, wordily. Mrs. Marne smiled at Mary across the flower-sweet table.

"No," answered Hare presently. "Money isn't everything, but it is most.

It makes the mare go; also the nightmare. It talks, it shouts, and in the only language that needs no interpreter. I may describe it, without fear of contradiction, as the Esperanto of commerce."

"Clever, Pinky!" called his sister, derisively. "Confess that you rehea.r.s.ed this before a mirror."

The luncheon ended. If anything had been wanting to prove how agreeable it had been, it appeared now in the pretty reluctance with which the ladies rose. There was the customary pushing back of chairs, smoothing down of garments, recovering of handkerchiefs from beneath the board.

The room and the table were the objects of new compliments, given in farewell.

"Who would have dreamed," said Mary, looking back from the door at her father's perfectly appointed room, "that yachts were as nice as this?"

"And to think," said Mrs. Marne, "that it was all done by a Mere Man."

McTosh, the mere man in question, blushed violently behind his deft hand.

They stepped up on deck into the shade of a great striped awning, and loitered along the side, caught by the beauty of the late summer scene.

Sky and water and green wood blended into practised perfectness. The rippling water was blue as the heavens, which was very blue indeed. The sun kissed it like a lover.

"Will some one kindly tell me," demanded Hare, referring to his sister's remark, "how the superst.i.tion arose that men have no taste?"

"I have read," said Mary idly, her back against the rail, "that it was invented by the authority who started the slander about women's having no sense of humor."

"Why, they haven't, have they?"

"You're wrong there, Hare," said Peter, out of his fathomless ignorance.