“Oh, no, I’m sure Mr Murchison won’t forget his native town altogether,” said Mrs Milburn, “though perhaps he won’t like it so well after seeing dear old England!”

“I expect,” said Lorne simply, “to like it better.”

“Well, of course, we shall all be pleased if you say that, Mr Murchison,” Mrs Milburn replied graciously.  “We shall feel quite complimented.  But I’m afraid you will find a great deal to criticize when you come back—­that is, if you go at all into society over there.  I always say there can be nothing like good English society.”

“I want to attend a sitting of the House,” Lorne said.  “I hope I shall have time for that.  I want to see those fellows handling their public business.  I don’t believe I shall find our men so far behind, for point of view and grasp and dispatch.  Of course there’s always Wallingham to make a standard for us all.  But they haven’t got so many Wallinghams.”

“Wasn’t it Wallingham, Louisa, that Mr Milburn was saying at breakfast was such a dangerous man?  So able, he said, but dangerous.  Something to do with the tariff.”

“Oh?” said Lorne, and he said no more, for at that moment Dora came in.  She came in looking very straight and graceful and composed.  Her personal note was carried out in her pretty clothes, which hung and “sat” upon her like the rhythm of verses; they could fall no other way.  She had in every movement the definite accent of young ladyhood; she was very much aware of herself, of the situation, and of her value in it, a setting for herself she saw it, and saw it truly.  No one, from the moment she entered the room, looked at anything else.

“Oh, Mr Murchison,” she said.  “How do you do?  Mother, do you mind if I open the window?  It’s quite warm out of doors—­regular summer.”

Lorne sprang to open the window, while Miss Filkin, murmuring that it had been a beautiful day, moved a little farther from it.

“Oh, please don’t trouble, Mr Murchison; thank you very much!” Miss Milburn continued, and subsided on a sofa.  “Have you been playing tennis this week?”

Mr Murchison said that he had been able to get down to the club only once.

“The courts aren’t a bit in good order.  They want about a week’s rolling.  The balls get up anywhere,” said Dora.

“Lawn tennis,” Mrs Milburn asserted herself, “is a delightful exercise.  I hope it will never go out of fashion; but that is what we used to say of croquet, and it has gone out and come in again.”

Lorne listened to this with deference; there was a hint of patience in the regard Dora turned upon her mother.  Mrs Milburn continued to dilate upon lawn tennis, dealt lightly with badminton, and brought the conversation round with a graceful sweep to canoeing.  Dora’s attitude before she had done became slightly permissive, but Mrs Milburn held on till she had accomplished her conception of conduct for the occasion; then she remembered a meeting in the schoolhouse.