They sauntered aft, Peter and Hare in the rear.
"Committee meeting at five-thirty?"
"Precisely. And by the bye," began Hare….
The candidate, in his tiny frock coat, with pale gray spats and scarf to match, looked overdressed in the brilliant sunshine. Yet probably Peter, whose purple tie blossomed too gorgeously above a blue silk "fancy vest" of a cut a good deal affected in the early nineties, looked the more striking of the two.
"He's a fool," declared Peter presently. "The chances are that Ryan has a barrel of votes salted down where we'll have the devil's own time tapping them. You can't smoke out a skunk in a minute, I tell you."
Mrs. Marne, in a cushioned chair, was being markedly agreeable to her host.
"It's my début on a yacht," she was rattling away. "Is there any special etiquette? Coach me from time to time when you see me fumbling, won't you? And if there is a code, there is one thing that I move shall go into it, here and now. Politics is—or are—barred for the day! Will you make it a rule that whoever mentions it—or them—forfeits butter, Mr. Varney?"
Varney laughed. "A rank outsider myself," said he, "I'm absolutely willing. But I fear that in a division the nays would have it."
"You and I," she said, "against Mr. Maginnis and Pinky. A tie. Mary would have the deciding vote."
"Then you'd lose out," said her brother, whose social manner, it was developing, differed somewhat from that of his official moments.