es found it rather difficult
to keep up with the talk across the table, they changed the subject
so rapidly, and they half spoke of so many things without waiting to
explain. He could not at once grasp the fact that people who had no
other position in the world save that of observers were speaking so
authoritatively of public men and public measures. He found, to his
delight, that for the first time in several years he was not presiding
at his own table, and that his guests seemed to feel no awe of him.

"What's the use of a yacht nowadays?" Collier was saying--"what's the
use of a yacht, when you can go to sleep in a wagon-lit at the Gare du
Nord, and wake up at Vladivostok? And look at the time it saves; eleven
days to Gib, six to Port Said, and fifteen to Colombo--there you are,
only half-way around, and you're already sixteen days behind the man in
the wagon-lit."

"But nobody wants to go to Vladivostok," said Miss Cameron, "or anywhere
else in a wagon-lit. But with a yacht you can explore out-of-the-way
places, and you meet new and interesting people. We wouldn't have met
Sir Charles if we had waited for a wagon-lit." She bowed her head to
the Governor, and he smiled with gratitude. He had lost Mr. Collier
somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and he was glad she had brought them back
to the Windless Isles once more.

"And again I repeat that the answer to that is, 'Why not? said the March
Hare,'" remarked Mr. Collier, determinedly.

The answer, as an answer, did not strike Sir Charles as a very good one.
But the ladies seemed to comprehend, for Miss Cameron said: "Did I tell
you about meeting him at Oxford just a few months before his death--at
a children's tea-party? He was so sweet and understanding with them!
Two women tried to lionize him, and he ran away and played with the
children. I was more glad to meet him than any one I can think of. Not
as a personage, you know, but because I felt grateful to him."

"Yes, that way, distinctly," said Mrs. Collier. "I should have felt that
way towards Mrs. Ewing more than any one else."

"I know, 'Jackanapes,'" remarked Collier, shortly; "a brutal assault
upon the feelings, I say."

"Some one else said it before you, Robert," Mrs. Collier commented,
calmly. "Perhaps Sir Charles met him at Apia." They all turned and
looked at him. He wished he could say he had met him at Apia. He did
not quite see how they had made their way from a children's tea party
at Oxford to the S