f the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows
so permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered
among their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled
Felix to quietude, and the faint far muttering of that thunder died
away.

Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up there
by Clara. It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well known for
sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though it had been
there a long time--a pretty creature with shoulders drooping, eyes
modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her head.

"Well, Dad?"

"They're coming."

"When?"

"On Tuesday--the youngsters, only."

"You might tell me a little about them."

But Felix only smiled. His powers of description faltered before that
task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject them to
failure.

CHAPTER VIII

Not till three o'clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come.
Lord and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and Lady
Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon train brought
three members of the Lower House, who liked a round of golf--Colonel
Martlett, Mr. Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar--with their wives; also
Miss Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere; and Moorsome, the
landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who went nowhere, and that
in almost perfect silence, which he afterward avenged. By a train almost
sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs, alone,
Henry Wiltram, whom some believed to have been the very first to have
ideas about the land. He was followed in the last possible train by
Cuthcott, the advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude
Ughtred in her beauty. Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while
dressing, that almost every shade of opinion about the land was
represented this week-end. She was not, she said, afraid of anything,
if she could keep Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart. The House of Commons
men would, of course, be all right. Stanley assented: "They'll be 'fed
up' with talk. But how about Britto--he can sometimes be very nasty, and
Cuthcott's been pretty rough on him, in his rag."

Clara had remembered that, and she was putting Lady Maude on one side of
Cuthcott, and Moorsome on the other, so that he would be quite safe at
dinner, and afterward--Stanley must look out!

"What have you done with Nedda?" Stanley asked.

"Given her to C