ualled.

"We are a little late," said his aristocratic charioteer, her hat
crooked and her mouth quite as vicious as Flora's when touched up with
a ragged whip, "but we'll be in time for a game of croquet before tea.
We have the tea at five, because it's beginning to darken so early, and
then we have a nice little show in the school-house: Marcus and I both
believe in amusing the people. So you see it's not exactly a picnic,
but quite a lot of things put together. You'll see presently."

And he did. Father and mother of their people, Mr. and Mrs. Abercorn
had instituted a remarkable series of "events," as they say on regatta
programmes--nautical, terpsichorean, athletic, musical and
histrionic--grouped under the head of "games" and the large and
delighted crowd drawn from several parishes rewarded their cheerful and
untiring efforts. The Rector was not only all things to all men but to
many women and numerous children as well, and Ringfield noted that,
unlike the West, the men assembled were nearly all old men; there was a
marked scarcity of boys and youths, and these old men appeared to be
many years older than they had any right to appear. Many of them
possessed but a couple of sound teeth apiece, others had retained the
lower set more or less horribly intact, while a single tusk adorned the
upper gum. Absence of regular visits to the dentist, or indeed of any
visits at all, had wrought this ruin in faces also wrinkled and
weather-beaten by exposure to the strenuous climate. The women showed
to better advantage than the men, and the French were more
prepossessing and better preserved than the English, especially in the
matter of teeth, owing probably to a steady diet of onions and
comparative lack of meat.

Diversity among the ladies included the fat, motherly looking ones,
several of whom were spinsters; the young, too-smartly dressed
daughters of farmers, possessing very little beauty, but of good height
and figure; one person clothed entirely in black silk and very
conscious of a new kind of watch, of gold and colours and small, pinned
to her left bosom; and last, a couple of conventional Englishwomen
staying at the Rectory.

It was natural that Mrs. Abercorn should desire to present to her
friends and a few of the "quality" so good-looking a young man as
Ringfield, and as soon as the buggy had been tied up under a grove of
maples, he was led about by the energetic queen of the feast, whose
attire, weir