Tom did it awkwardly.  It is a gift to be able to shake hands easily; a gift withheld from most girls and all boys up to the soulful age.  But there was worse to follow.  Ardea was somewhere on the peopled verandas, and the Major, more terrible in his hospitality than he had ever appeared in the old-time rage-fits, dragged his hapless victim up and down and around and about in search of her.  “Not say ‘Howdy’ to Ardea?  Why, you young cub, where are youh mannehs, suh?” Thus the Major, when the victim would have broken away.

It was a fiery trial for Tom—­a way-picking among red-hot plowshares of embarrassment.  How the well-bred folk smiled, and the grand ladies drew their immaculate skirts aside to make passing-room for his dusty feet!  How one of them wondered, quite audibly, where in the world Major Dabney had unearthed that young native!  Tom was conscious of every fleck of dust on his clothes and shoes; of the skilless knot in his necktie; of the school-desk droop in his shoulders; of the utter superfluousness of his big hands.

And when, at the long last, Ardea was discovered sitting beside a gorgeously-attired Queen of Sheba, who also smiled and examined him minutely through a pair of eye-glasses fastened on the end of a gold-mounted stick, the place of torment, wherever and whatever it might be, held no deeper pit for him.  What he had climbed the mountain to find was a little girl in a school frock, who had sat on the yellowing grass with one arm around the neck of a great dog, looking fearlessly up at him and telling him she was sorry he was going away.  What he had found was a very statuesque little lady, clad in fluffy summer white, with the other Ardea’s slate-blue eyes and soft voice, to be sure, but with no other reminder of the lost avatar.

From first to last, from the moment she made room for him, dusty clothes and all, on the settee between herself and the Queen of Sheba, Tom was conscious of but one clearly-defined thought—­an overmastering desire to get away—­to be free at any cost.  But the way of escape would not disclose itself, so he sat in stammering misery, answering Ardea’s questions about the sectarian school in bluntest monosyllables, and hearing with his other ear a terrible Major tell the Queen of Sheba all about the railroad invasion, and how he—­Tom Gordon—­had run to find a punk match to fire a cannon in the Dabney cause.

All of which was bad enough, but the torture rack had still another turn left in its screw.  After he had sat for awkward hours, as it seemed, though minutes would have measured it, there was a stir on the veranda and he became vaguely conscious of an impending catastrophe.

“Grandpa is telling you you must stay to luncheon with us,” prompted Ardea.  “Will you take me in?”

The Major had already given his arm to the Queen of Sheba, and there was no help for the helpless.  Tom crooked his arm as stiffly as possible and said “May I?”—­which was an inspiration—­and they got to the great dining-room with no worse mishap than a collision at the door brought about by his stepping on the train of one of the grand ladies.