This graceful appeal had some temporary effect, but the congestion soon returned, when a man of the hour appeared, a man whose genius scattered the groups and who did more to make the party a success than any single individual,--Mr. Hamilton Tooting, in a glorious white silk necktie with purple flowers.

"I'll handle 'em, Mr. Crewe," he said; "a little brains'll start 'em goin'. Come along here, Mr. Wright, and I'll show you the best cows this side of the Hudson Riverall pedigreed prize winners. Hello, Aust, you take hold and get the wimmen-folks interested in the cabinets. You know where they are."

"There's a person with some sense," remarked Mrs. Pomfret, who had been at a little distance among a group of summer-resident ladies and watching the affair with shining eyes. "I'll help. Come, Edith; come, Victoria where's Victoria?--and dear Mrs. Chillingham. We American women are so deplorably lacking in this kind of experience. Alice, take some of the women into the garden. I'm going to interest that dear, benevolent man who looks so helpless, and doing his best to have a good time."

The dear, benevolent man chanced to be Mr. Job Braden, who was standing somewhat apart with his hands in his pockets. He did not move as Mrs.

Pomfret approached him, holding her glasses to her eyes.

"How are you?" exclaimed that lady, extending a white-gloved hand with a cordiality that astonished her friends. "It is so pleasant to see you here, Mr.--Mr.--"

"How be you?" said Mr. Braden, taking her fingers in the gingerly manner he would have handled one of Mr. Crewe's priceless curios. The giraffe Mr. Barnum had once brought to Ripton was not half as interesting as this immaculate and mysterious production of foreign dressmakers and French maids, but he refrained from betraying it. His eye rested on the lorgnette.

"Near-sighted, be you?" he inquired,--a remark so unexpected that for the moment Mrs. Pomfret was deprived of speech.

"I manage to see better with--with these," she gasped, "when we get old--you know."

"You hain't old," said Mr. Braden, gallantly. "If you be," he added, his eye travelling up and down the Parisian curves, "I wouldn't have suspected it--not a mite."

"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr.--Mr.--" she replied hurriedly. "Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?"

"Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me."

"How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret.

"I hain't heard your name," he said.

"Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret--a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's. Whenever he has his friends with him, like this, I come over and help him. It is so difficult for a bachelor to entertain, Mr. Braden."

"Well," said Mr. Braden, bending alarmingly near her ear, "there's one way out of it."

"What's that?" said Mrs. Pomfret.

"Git married," declared Mr. Braden.

"How very clever you are, Mr. Braden! I wish poor dear Mr. Crewe would get married--a wife could take so many burdens off his shoulders. You don't know Mr. Crewe very well, do you?"

"Callate to--so so," said Mr. Braden.

Mrs. Pomfret was at sea again.

"I mean, do you see him often?"

"Seen him once," said Mr. Braden. "G-guess that's enough."

"You're a shrewd judge of human nature, Mr. Braden," she replied, tapping him on the shoulder with the lorgnette, "but you can have no idea how good he is--how unceasingly he works for others. He is not a man who gives much expression to his feelings, as no doubt you have discovered, but if you knew him as I do, you would realize how much affection he has for his country neighbours and how much he has their welfare at heart."

"Loves 'em--does he--loves 'em?"

"He is like an English gentleman in his sense of responsibility,"

said Mrs. Pomfret; "over there, you know, it is a part of a country gentleman's duty to improve the condition of his--his neighbours. And then Mr. Crewe is so fond of his townspeople that he couldn't resist doing this for them," and she indicated with a sweep of her eyeglasses the beatitude with which they were surrounded.

"Wahn't no occasion to," said Mr. Braden.

"What!" cried Mrs. Pomfret, who had been walking on ice for some time.

"This hain't England--is it? Hain't England?"

"No," she admitted, "but--"

"Hain't England," said Mr. Braden, and leaned forward until he was within a very few inches of her pearl ear-ring. "He'll be chose all right--d-don't fret--he'll be chose."

"My dear Mr. Braden, I've no doubt of it--Mr. Crewe's so popular," she cried, removing her ear-ring abruptly from the danger zone. "Do make yourself at home," she added, and retired from Mr. Braden's company a trifle disconcerted,--a new experience for Mrs. Pomfret. She wondered whether all country people were like Mr. Braden, but decided, after another experiment or two, that he was an original. More than once during the afternoon she caught sight of him, beaming upon the festivities around him. But she did not renew the conversation.

To Austen Vane, wandering about the grounds, Mr. Crewe's party presented a sociological problem of no small interest. Mr. Crewe himself interested him, and he found himself speculating how far a man would go who charged the fastnesses of the politicians with a determination not to be denied and a bank account to be reckoned with. Austen talked to many of the Leith farmers whom he had known from boyhood, thanks to his custom of roaming the hills; they were for the most part honest men whose occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content to leave politics to Mr. Braden--that being his profession. To the most intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton whim of a millionaire. It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they were mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to secure votes which were as certain as the sun's rising on the morrow.

It was some time before Austen came upon the object of his search--though scarce admitting to himself that it had an object. In greeting him, after inquiring about his railroad case, Mr. Crewe had indicated with a wave of his hand the general direction of the refreshments; but it was not until Austen had tried in all other quarters that he made his way towards the porch where the lemonade and cake and sandwiches were. It was, after all, the most popular place, though to his mind the refreshments had little to do with its popularity. From the outskirts of the crowd he perceived Victoria presiding over the punchbowl that held the lemonade. He liked to think of her as Victoria; the name had no familiarity for him, but seemed rather to enhance the unattainable quality of her.

Surrounding Victoria were several clean-looking, freckled, and tanned young men of undergraduate age wearing straw hats with coloured ribbons, who showed every eagerness to obey and even anticipate the orders she did not hesitate to give them. Her eye seemed continually on the alert for those of Mr. Crewe's guests who were too bashful to come forward, and discerning them she would send one of her lieutenants forward with supplies. Sometimes she would go herself to the older people; and once, perceiving a tired woman holding a baby (so many brought babies, being unable to leave them), Victoria impulsively left her post and seized the woman by the arm.

"Do come and sit down," she cried; "there's a chair beside me. And oh, what a nice baby! Won't you let me hold him?"

"Why, yes, ma'am," said the woman, looking up at Victoria with grateful, patient eyes, and then with awe at what seemed to her the priceless embroidery on Victoria's waist, "won't he spoil your dress?"

"Bless him, no," said Victoria, poking her finger into a dimple--for he was smiling at her. "What if he does?" and forthwith she seized him in her arms and bore him to the porch, amidst the laughter of those who beheld her, and sat him down on her knee in front of the lemonade bowl, the tired mother beside her. "Will a little lemonade hurt him? Just a very, very little, you know?"

"Why, no, ma'am," said the mother.

"And just a teeny bit of cake," begged Victoria, daintily breaking off a piece, while the baby gurgled and snatched for it. "Do tell me how old he is, and how many more you have."

"He's eleven months on the twenty-seventh," said the mother, "and I've got four more." She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the embroidery.

"What between them and the housework and the butter makin', it hain't easy. Be you married?"

"No," said Victoria, laughing and blushing a little.

"You'll make a good wife for somebody," said the woman. "I hope you'll get a good man."

"I hope so, too," said Victoria, blushing still deeper amidst the laughter, "but there doesn't seem to be much chance of it, and good men are very scarce."

"I guess you're right," said the mother, soberly. "Not but what my man's good enough, but he don't seem to get along, somehow. The farm's wore out, and the mortgage comes around so regular."

"Where do you live?" asked Victoria, suddenly growing serious.

"Fitch's place. 'Tain't very far from the Four Corners, on the Avalon road."

"And you are Mrs. Fitch?"

"Callate to be," said the mother. "If it ain't askin' too much, I'd like to know your name."