Since the meeting in the restaurant the day before, which had resulted in Hugh’s happy inspiration that the festival begun should be continued indefinitely at Highlawns, a kind of freemasonry had sprung up between the four.  Honora found herself, mercifully, outside the circle:  for such was the lively character of the banter that a considerable adroitness was necessary to obtain, between the talk and—­laughter, the ear of the company.  And so full were they of the reminiscences which had been crowded into the thirty hours or so they had spent together, that her comparative silence remained unnoticed.  To cite an example, Mr. Pembroke was continually being addressed as the Third Vice-president, an allusion that Mrs. Rindge eventually explained.

“You ought to have been with us coming up on the train,” she cried to Honora; “I thought surely we’d be put off.  We were playing bridge in the little room at the end of the car when the conductor came for our tickets.  Georgie had ’em in his pocket, but he told the man to go away, that he was the third vice-president of the road, and we were his friends.  The conductor asked him if he were Mr. Wheeler, or some such name, and Georgie said he was surprised he didn’t know him.  Well, the man stood there in the door, and Georgie picked up his hand and made it hearts—­or was it diamonds, Georgie?”

“Spades,” said that gentleman, promptly.

“At any rate,” Mrs. Rindge continued, “we all began to play, although we were ready to blow up with laughter, and after a while Georgie looked around and said, ‘What, are you there yet?’ My dear, you ought to have seen the conductor’s face!  He said it was his duty to establish Georgie’s identity, or something like that, and Georgie told him to get off at the next station and buy Waring’s Magazine—­was that it, Georgie?”

“How the deuce should I know?”

“Well, some such magazine.  Georgie said he’d find an article in it on the Railroad Kings and Princes of America, and that his picture, Georgie’s, was among the very first!” At this juncture in her narrative Mrs. Rindge shrieked with laughter, in which she was joined by Mrs. Kame and Hugh; and she pointed a forefinger across the table at Mr. Pembroke, who went on solemnly eating his dinner.  “Georgie gave him ten cents with which to buy the magazine,” she added a little hysterically.  “Well, there was a frightful row, and a lot of men came down to that end of the car, and we had to shut the door.  The conductor said the most outrageous things, and Georgie pretended to be very indignant, too, and gave him the tickets under protest.  He told Georgie he ought to be in an asylum for the criminally insane, and Georgie advised him to get a photograph album of the high officials of the railroad.  The conductor said Georgie’s picture was probably in the rogue’s gallery.  And we lost two packs of cards out of the window.”