the occasion we have already heard about, upon which royalty was present in two generations.  They travelled to it by special train, a circumstance which made them grave, receptive, and even slightly ceremonious with one another.  Lord Selkirk, with royalty on his hands, naturally could not give them much of his time, and they moved about in a cluster, avoiding the ladies’ trains and advising one another that it was a good thing the High Commissioner was a man of large private means; it wasn’t everybody that could afford to take the job.  Yet they were not wholly detached from the occasion; they looked at it, after they had taken it in, with an air half-amused, half-proprietary.  All this had, in a manner, come out of Canada, and Canada was theirs.  One of them—­Bates it was—­responding to a lady who was effusive about the strawberries, even took the modestly depreciatory attitude of the host.  “They’re a fair size for this country, ma’am, but if you want berries with a flavour we’ll do better for you in the Niagara district.”

It must be added that Cruickshank lunched with Wallingham at his club, and with Tricorne at his; and on both occasions the quiet and attentive young secretary went with him, for purposes of reference, his pocket bulging with memoranda.  The young secretary felt a little embarrassed to justify his presence at Tricorne’s lunch, as the Right Honourable gentleman seemed to have forgotten what his guests had come for beyond it, and talked exclusively and exhaustively about the new possibilities for fruit-farming in England.  Cruickshank fairly shook himself into his overcoat with irritation afterward.  “It’s the sort of thing we must except,” he said, as they merged upon Pall Mall.  It was not the sort of thing Lorne expected; but we know him unsophisticated and a stranger to the heart of the Empire, which beats through such impediment of accumulated tissue.  Nor was it the sort of thing they got from Wallingham, the keen-eyed and probing, whose skill in adjusting conflicting interests could astonish even their expectation, and whose vision of the essentials of the future could lift even their enthusiasm.  One would like to linger over their touch with Wallingham, that fusion of energy with energy, that straight, satisfying, accomplishing dart.  There is more drama here; no doubt, than in all the pages that are to come.  But I am explaining now how little, not how much, the Cruickshank deputation, and especially Lorne Murchison, had the opportunity of feeling and learning in London, in order to show how wonderful it was that Lorne felt and learned so widely.  That, what he absorbed and took back with him is, after all, what we have to do with; his actual adventures are of no great importance.