t for the county as this will be,"
remarked the Baron, "I feel I have performed my duty towards society
for some time to come. No one has had a dragon at a private house
before me, I believe."

"Oh, surely not," simpered the sleek Hucbald. "Not even Lady Jumping
Jack."

"Fiddle!" grunted the Baron. "She indeed! Fandangoes!"

"She's very pious," protested the Rev. Hucbald, whom the lady
sometimes asked to fish lunches in Lent.

"Fandangoes!" repeated the Baron. He had once known her exceedingly
well, but she pursued variety at all expense, even his. As for
refusals, the Chaplain was quite right. There were none. Nobody had a
previous engagement--or kept it, if they had.

"Good gracious, Rupert!" (or Cecil, or Chandos, as it might be,) each
dame in the county had exclaimed to her lord on opening the envelope
brought by private hand from Wantley, "we're asked to the Disseisins
to see a dragon,--and his daughter married."

"By heaven, Muriel, we'll go!" the gentleman invariably replied, under
the impression that Elaine was to marry the Dragon, which would be a
show worth seeing. The answers came flying back to Wantley every
minute or two, most of them written in such haste that you could only
guess they were acceptances. And those individuals who lived so far
away across the county that the invitations reached them too late to
be answered, immediately rang every bell in the house and ordered the
carriage in frantic tones.

Of _course_ nobody kept any engagement. Sir Guy Vol-au-Vent (and none
but a most abandoned desperado or advanced thinker would be willing to
do such a thing on Christmas) had accepted an invitation to an ambush
at three for the slaying of Sir Percy de Resistance. But the ambush
was put off till a more convenient day. Sir Thomas de Brie had been
going to spend his Christmas at a cock-fight in the Count de
Gorgonzola's barn. But he remarked to his man Edward, who brought the
trap to the door, that the Count de Gorgonzola might go ---- Never
mind what he remarked. It was not nice; though oddly enough it was
exactly the same remark that the Count had made about Sir Thomas on
telling his own man James to drive to Wantley and drop the cock-fight.
All these gentlemen, as soon as they heard the great news, started for
the Manor with the utmost speed.

[Illustration: Sir Thomas de Brie hastens to accept the Baron's polite
Inuitation]

Nor was it the quality alone who were so unanimous in their feelings