“It won’t stand out,” Stella assured him.  “I’ll attend to it.  Don’t you worry.”

“I suppose you had a lovely time, Mr Murchison?” said Mrs Williams, gently tilting to and fro in a rocking-chair, with her pretty feet in their American shoes well in evidence.  It is a fact, or perhaps a parable, that should be interesting to political economists, the adaptability of Canadian feet to American shoes; but fortunately it is not our present business.  Though I must add that the “rocker” was also American; and the hammock in which Stella reposed came from New York; and upon John Murchison’s knee, with the local journal, lay a pink evening paper published in Buffalo.

“Better than I can tell you, Mrs Williams, in all sorts of ways.  But it’s good to be back, too.  Very good!” Lorne threw up his head and drew in the pleasant evening air of midsummer with infinite relish while his eye travelled contentedly past the chestnuts on the lawn, down the vista of the quiet tree-bordered street.  It lay empty in the solace of the evening, a blue hill crossed it in the distance, and gave it an unfettered look, the wind stirred in the maples.  A pair of schoolgirls strolled up and down bareheaded; now and then a buggy passed.

“There’s room here,” he said.

“Find it kind of crowded up over there?” asked Mr Williams.  “Worse than New York?”

“Oh, yes.  Crowded in a patient sort of way—­it’s enough to break your heart—­that you don’t see in New York!  The poor of New York—­well, they’ve got the idea of not being poor.  In England they’re resigned, they’ve got callous.  My goodness! the fellows out of work over there—­you can see they’re used to it, see it in the way they slope along and the look in their eyes, poor dumb dogs.  They don’t understand it, but they’ve just got to take it!  Crowded?  Rather!”

“We don’t say ‘rather’ in this country, mister,” observed Stella.

“Well, you can say it now, kiddie.”

They laughed at the little passage—­the traveller’s importation of one or two Britishisms had been the subject of skirmish before—­but silence fell among them for a moment afterward.  They all had in the blood the remembrance of what Lorne had seen.

“Well, you’ve been doing big business,” said Horace Williams.

Lorne shook his head.  “We haven’t done any harm,” he said, “but our scheme’s away out of sight now.  At least it ought to be.”

“Lost in the bigger issue.” said Williams, and Lorne nodded.

The bigger issue had indeed in the meantime obscured the political horizon, and was widely spreading.  A mere colonial project might well disappear in it.  England was absorbed in a single contemplation.  Wallingham, though he still supported the disabilities of a right honourable evangelist with a gospel of his own, was making astonishing conversions; the edifice of the national economic creed seemed coming over at the top.  It was a question of the resistance of the base, and the world was watching.