As the villagers gathered in the park, the house-party joined them by way of the gardens.  A conjurer from London gave an entertainment under a huge tree, and children found white rabbits taken from their pockets and oranges from their caps, with squeals of joy and shouts of laughter.  Lady Maria’s guests walked about and looked on, laughing with the children.

The great affair of tea followed the performance.  No treat is fairly under way until the children are filled to the brim with tea and buns and cake, principally cake in plummy wedges.

Lady Agatha and Mrs. Ralph handed cake along rows of children seated on the grass.  Miss Brooke was talking to Lord Walderhurst when the work began.  She had poppies in her hat and carried a poppy-coloured parasol, and sat under a tree, looking very alluring.

“I ought to go and help to hand cake,” she said.

“My cousin Maria ought to do it,” remarked Lord Walderhurst, “but she will not—­neither shall I. Tell me something about the elevated railroad and Five-Hundred-and-Fifty-Thousandth Street.”  He had a slightly rude, gracefully languid air, which Cora Brooke found somewhat impressive, after all.

Emily Fox-Seton handed cake and regulated supplies with cheerful tact and good spirits.  When the older people were given their tea, she moved about their tables, attending to every one.  She was too heart-whole in her interest in her hospitalities to find time to join Lady Maria and her party at the table under the ilex-trees.  She ate some bread-and-butter and drank a cup of tea while she talked to some old women she had made friends with.  She was really enjoying herself immensely, though occasionally she was obliged to sit down for a few moments just to rest her tired feet.  The children came to her as to an omnipotent and benign being.  She knew where the toys were kept and what prizes were to be given for the races.  She represented law and order and bestowal.  The other ladies walked about in wonderful dresses, smiling and exalted, the gentlemen aided the sports in an amateurish way and made patrician jokes among themselves, but this one lady seemed to be part of the treat itself.  She was not so grandly dressed as the others,—­her dress was only blue linen with white bands on it,—­and she had only a sailor hat with a buckle and bow, but she was of her ladyship’s world of London people, nevertheless, and they liked her more than they had ever liked a lady before.  It was a fine treat, and she seemed to have made it so.  There had never been quite such a varied and jovial treat at Mallowe before.

The afternoon waxed and waned.  The children played games and raced and rejoiced until their young limbs began to fail them.  The older people sauntered about or sat in groups to talk and listen to the village band.  Lady Maria’s visitors, having had enough of rural festivities, went back to the gardens in excellent spirits, to talk and to watch a game of tennis which had taken form on the court.