A severe elderly man with a long, flat upper lip and side whiskers immediately sprang apparently from the earth and approached him.  He had exactly the manner of resolute gloom that a small boy has when something has gone wrong at school and he wants his mother to drag it out of him.

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“Morning, McKellar,” said Cord, gayly.  “Everything’s all right, I suppose.”

McKellar shook his head.  Everything was about as far from all right as it well could be.  The cook was a violent maniac who required peas to be picked so young that they weren’t worth the picking.  Tomes and his footman were a band of malicious pirates who took pleasure in cutting for the table the very buds which McKellar was cherishing for the horticultural show.  And as for the season—­McKellar could not remember such a devastatingly dry August since he was a lad at home.

“Why, McKellar, we had rain two days ago.”

“You wouldn’t call that little mist rain, sir.”

“And last week a perfect downpour.”

“Ah, that’s the kind doesn’t sink into the soil.”  Looking up critically at the heavens, McKellar expressed his settled conviction that in two weeks’ time hardly a blade or a shrub would be alive in the island at Newport.

“Well, that will save us all a lot of trouble, McKellar,” said Mr. Cord, and presently left his gloomy gardener.  He had attained his object.  When he went back into the house, Eddie had gone, and he could go back to his new driver in peace.

He was not interrupted until ten minutes past one, when Crystal came into the room, her eyes shining with exactly the same color that, beyond the lawn, the sea was displaying.  Unlike Eddie, she looked better than in her fancy dress.  She had on flat tennis shoes, a cotton blouse and a duck skirt, and a russet-colored sweater.  Miss Cox would have rejected every item of her costume except the row of pearls, which just showed at her throat.

She kissed her father rapidly, and said: 

“Good morning, dear.  Are you ready for breakfast—­lunch I mean?”

She was a little bit flustered for the reason that it seemed to her as if any one would be able to see that she was an entirely different Crystal from the one of the evening before, and she was not quite sure what she was going to answer when her father said, as she felt certain he must say at any moment, “My dear child, what has come over you?”

He did not say this, however.  He held out his golf-club and said, “Got a new driver.”

“Yes, yes, dear, very nice,” said Crystal.  “But I want to have lunch punctually, to-day.”

Mr. Cord sighed.  Crystal wasn’t always very sympathetic.  “I’m ready,” he said, “only Eddie’s coming.”

“Eddie!” exclaimed Crystal, drawing her shoulders up, as if at the sight of a cobra in her path.  “Why is Eddie coming to lunch?  I did not ask him.”