Both Saxton and Raridan were a good deal at the Porters'. He knew that Raridan had been a playmate of Evelyn's in their youth, when the elder Porters and Raridans had been friends and neighbors. There existed between them the lighthearted camaraderie that young people carry from youth to maturity, and it had touched Saxton with envy. As a man having no fixed duties, Raridan sometimes went, in the middle of the hot mornings, to the Porter hilltop, where it was pleasant to sit and talk to a pretty girl and look down on the seething caldron below, when every other man of the community was sweltering at the business of earning his daily bread.
"You oughtn't to get so violent about these things," Saxton went on to say. "You will yourself be one of the ornaments of the show, and you will dance before the throne and be glad of the chance. They have a king, don't they? You might get the job. Who's going to be king, by the way?"
"Wheaton, I fancy; the announcement hasn't been made yet."
"Oh," said Saxton, significantly. "Is this a little jealousy? Are we sorry that we're not to wear the royal robes ourself? Well! well, I begin to understand!"
"I don't like that either, if you want to know. It all gets back to the accursed commercial idea. Wheaton's the cashier in Porter's bank. It's very fitting that the president's daughter and the young and brilliant cashier should be identified together in a public function like this. No doubt Wheaton is fixing it up."
"Well, why don't you fix it up? I have been deluding myself with the idea that you were a person of consequence in this town, yet you admit that in a mere trifling social matter you are outwitted, or about to be, by one of these commercial persons you hate so much, or say you do."
He spoke tauntingly, but Raridan was evidently serious in his complaint, and Saxton turned the talk into other channels. The Chinese servant came in presently with a card for Raridan.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "it's Bishop Delafield." He plunged downstairs and returned immediately with a man whose great figure loomed darkly in the doorway.
Raridan made a light.