“Bring who in?”
“Mr. Burt.”
“The little man’s as shy as a calf.”
“Perhaps you talked him silly.”
“Look here, my dear, it’s too hot to argue. Is my tie proper?”
His daughter regarded him with critical candor.
“It will do,” she answered, resignedly, as though her father’s ties were beyond all promise of salvation.
The camp of the fruit-pickers in Mr. Carrington’s fourteen-acre stood out like a field-hospital under the August sun. There were half a dozen white tents pitched near the two sheds, and on an ingenious frame-work of poles an awning had been spread so that convalescents could be brought out to lie in the shade, and gain the maximum amount of air. The whole place looked trim and clean, and a faint perfume of some coal-tar disinfectant permeated the air.
Mr. Carrington, as he emerged from the orchard gate, saw quite a representative gathering moving through the camp. Several of the Roxton celebrities who had subscribed to the relief fund, had been invited by Porteus Carmagee, the treasurer, to drive over and see how the money had been spent. The farmer recognized Lady Gillingham’s carriage and pair waiting in the roadway beyond the white field-gate. The Canon’s landau had drawn up deferentially behind it, while Mrs. Murchison’s pony, that drew her governess car, was being held by one of the pickers who had lost two children but a week ago.
Lady Sophia appeared to be holding quite a state inspection, for she had Murchison in his white linen jacket at one elbow, and the Canon in his black coat at the other. She was making considerable use of her lorgnette—a very affable, commonplace, and well-meaning great lady, who felt it to be a most Christian condescension on her part to drive out and examine this temporary hospital and its London poor. Catherine Murchison and Mrs. Stensly were talking to one of the women lying under the awning. The treasurer had remained judiciously in the background, and was snapping away to three Roxton ladies who appeared to be fascinated by some subject foreign to enteric fever and pickers of fruit.