"What has happened to Mrs. Teddy Mahone?" exclaimed Rob, as a red-faced woman with an important self-conscious air hurried by. "She seems ubiquitous this morning, and as proud as a peacock over something. One would think she were the mistress of ceremonies from her manner."
"Or hostess, rather," said the miller. "She met me down by the fence on my arrival, and held out her hand as graciously as if she were a duchess in her own drawing-room, and I an invited guest.
"'Gude marnin' to yez, Mr. Holmes,' she said. 'I hope ye'll be afther enjyin' yerself the day. If anything intherferes wid yer comfort ye've but to shpake to Mahone about it. He's been appinted constable for the occasion, ye understhand. If I do say it as oughtn't, he can carry the title wid the best av 'im; him six fut two in his stockin's, an' the shtar shinin' on his wes'cut loike he'd been barn to the job.'
"Then she turned to greet some strangers from Morristown, and I heard her introducing herself as Mrs. Constable Mahone, and repeating the same instructions she had given me, to report to her husband, in case everything was not to their liking."
Both listeners laughed at the miller's imitation of her brogue, and the minister quoted, with an amused smile:
"'For never title yet so mean could prove,
But there was eke a mind, which did that title love.'
It is a pity we cannot dress more of them in 'a little brief authority.' It seems to be a means of grace to a certain class of Hibernians. It has Americanised the Mahones, for instance. You'll find no patriots on the ground to-day more enthusiastic than Mr. and Mrs. Constable Mahone. Fourth of July will be an honoured feast-day henceforth in their calendar. It is often surprising how quickly a policeman's buttons and billy will make a good citizen out of the wildest bog-trotter that ever brandished a shillalah."
Later, in subsequent wanderings around the grounds, the young collegian spied the little schoolmistress helping to keep guard over the cake-table. He immediately crossed over and joined her. She was looking unusually pretty, and there was an amused gleam in her eyes as she watched the crowds, which made him feel that she was viewing the scene from his standpoint; that he had found a kindred spirit.
"What incentive to patriotism do you see in all this, Miss Helen?" he asked, when he had induced her to turn over her guardianship of the cake-table to some one else, and join him in his tour among the boisterous picnickers.