Celebrity dropped in for lunch or dinner.  He could not be induced to remain permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip sometimes twice in a day.  The fact that Mrs. Cooke treated him with unqualified disapproval did not dampen his spirits or lessen the frequency of his visits, nor, indeed, did it seem to create any breach between husband and wife.  Mr. Cooke took it for granted that his friends should not please his wife, and Mrs. Cooke remarked to Farrar and me that her husband was old enough to know better, and too old to be taught.  She loved him devotedly and showed it in a hundred ways, but she was absolutely incapable of dissimulation.

Thanks to Mrs. Cooke, our visit to Mohair was a pleasant one.  We were able in many ways to help in the arrangements, especially Farrar, who had charge of decorating the grounds.  We saw but little of Mr. Cooke and the Celebrity.

The arrival of the Ten was an event of importance, and occurred the day of the dance.  I shall treat the Ten as a whole because they did not materially differ from one another in dress or habits or ambition or general usefulness on this earth.  It is true that Mr. Cooke had been able to make delicate distinctions between them for the aid of the Celebrity, but such distinctions were beyond me, and the power to make them lay only in a long and careful study of the species which I could not afford to give.  Likewise the life of any one of the Ten was the life of all, and might be truthfully represented by a single year, since each year was exactly like the preceding.  The ordinary year, as is well-known, begins on the first of January.  But theirs was not the ordinary year, nor the Church year, nor the fiscal year.  Theirs began in the Fall with the New York Horse Show.  And I am of the opinion, though open to correction, that they dated from the first Horse Show instead of from the birth of Christ.  It is certain that they were much better versed in the history of the Association than in that of the Union, in the biography of Excelsior rather than that of Lincoln.  The Dog Show was another event to which they looked forward, when they migrated to New York and put up at the country places of their friends.  But why go farther?

The Ten made themselves very much at home at Mohair.  One of them told the Celebrity he reminded him very much of a man he had met in New York and who had written a book, or something of that sort, which made the Celebrity wince.  The afternoon was spent in one of the stable lofts, where Mr. Cooke had set up a mysterious L-shaped box, in one arm of which a badger was placed by a groom, while my client’s Sarah, a terrier, was sent into the other arm to invite the badger out.  His objections exceeded the highest hopes; he dug his claws into the wood and devoted himself to Sarah’s countenance with unremitting industry.  This occupation was found so absorbing that it was with difficulty the Ten were induced to abandon it and dress for an early dinner, and only did so after the second peremptory message from Mrs. Cooke.