"Oh, I understand——" Frank Laniston eagerly interpolated.
"Royal Navy—all rot, of course," Haxon stipulated, including Jardine in his explanatory glance.
"But there is no fake about the high dive," cried out young Laniston delightedly.
"Haxon is my name," said the acrobat, flattered and at ease again. "And this is my friend and manager, Mr. Lloyd."
"Happy to meet you, Mr. Lloyd," said Laniston politely as they shook hands. "My name is Laniston." Then with the easy assurance of the very young and unthinking he continued exuberantly, "Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Jardine," with a roguish side-glance at his stiff and reluctant companion. Jardine shook hands, however, with the requisite courtesy, and thus the unlucky episode passed, resulting in naught but the achievement of an informal introduction to the two showmen, which fact, distasteful as it was, did not recur to Jardine's mind until later in the day.
The party from New Helvetia were dining at one of the smaller round tables in the long low room which looked out of several windows on the formal walks and trellised arbours of an old-fashioned flower garden. Here the sunshine was but a drowsy glamour, the shadow of the house and the foliage fell far athwart it, and the zinnias, the gladioli, white and red, the roses and the pinks, made a brilliant display of bloom. The meal was justifying the fame of the cuisine; the breeze fluttered the white jasmine that clambered about the window hard by; there seemed scant need of the punkahs, stoutly pulled back and forth over the three long tables at which the public in general was served. This little round table stood a trifle apart in a recess, which in fact had once been a small room, now thrown into the larger by the removal of a partition. It was sometimes consigned to the use of ladies travelling alone, coming down from New Helvetia to take the train, the new branch railroad having recently reached Colbury; or of some local politician of note, a candidate for Congress alighting here in stumping the district; or of the circuit judge, or perhaps the chancellor holding court in this division; or of some noted revivalist bent on awakening the conscience of a wide itinerary and here refreshing the inner man—always the guests assigned to this table were persons of distinction in their sort, and the board was suspected of furnishing special dainties not served to the general public.
The long tables were very orderly and decorous. Here dined usually most of the young clerks of the stores, a confirmed old bachelor or so, the visiting lawyers and clients from a distance with cases in court, two or three families of the place, the inevitable exponents of "declining housekeeping," a few young unsettled couples, mated but not yet nested, and to-day these were reinforced by the more well-to-do of the country folk attending the Fair. The Laniston party, well content in their sequestered nook and by reason of previous experience accustomed to the situation, now and again cast a casual glance at the long tables, but mostly found the outlook into the fair pleached alleys of the old garden a pleasing interlude between the mountain trout and the saddle of mountain mutton, both the finest flavoured of their kind in the world. The pungent odour of the mint sauce was fragrant on the air; the bees were astir among the sweet peas and pinks in the garden borders; a humming-bird's dainty wings fluttered gauzily among the white jasmine blooms at the window; suddenly the group's attention was recalled by the commotion of a late entrance; the head waiter strode down the room with an air of extreme importance and drew out two chairs at the nearest of the long narrow tables, but on its opposite side.
Mrs. Laniston was electrified when one of two gentlemen, ushered to these seats thus close by, gave a polite bow of recognition toward the table isolated in the alcove. Frank Laniston, punctiliously returning it, felt with the eyes of his mother upon him as if the sins of many sinful years had suddenly found him out. Jardine, with a sense of desperate ambush, formulated in his inner consciousness some hitherto suppressed convictions concerning the "freshness" of the hobble-de-hoy estate, and expressed his feeling of annoyance in a very stiff and formal bow—only vouchsafed indeed lest worse things ensue. Not until after both had spoken did Lloyd bow, and then as stiffly and haughtily as Jardine himself.
"Why, Mr. Jardine, I didn't know that you had acquaintances here," said Mrs. Laniston wonderingly, in a low, reproachful voice and with her eyes discreetly averted. "Who is that tremendously handsome man whom you seem to be keeping to yourself?"
"The stout gentleman?" suggested her son, blushing and considerably out of countenance, but bursting with the inopportune and irrepressible mirth of youth.