I observed that Mrs. Cooke, when she chose, could exert the subduing effect on her husband of a soft pedal on a piano; and during luncheon she kept, the soft pedal on.  And the Celebrity, being in some degree a kindred spirit, was also held in check.  But his wife had no sooner left the room when Mr. Cooke began on the subject uppermost in his mind.  I had suspected that his trip to Asquith that morning was for a purpose at which Mrs. Cooke had hinted.  But she, with a woman’s tact, had aimed to accomplish by degrees that which her husband would carry by storm.

“You’ve been at Asquith sometime, Crocker,” Mr. Cooke began, “long enough to know the people.”

“I know some of them,” I said guardedly.  But the rush was not to be stemmed.

“How many do you think you can muster for that entertainment of mine?  Fifty?  I ought to have fifty, at least.  Suppose you pick out fifty, and send me up the names.  I want good lively ones, you understand, that will stir things up.”

“I am afraid there are not fifty of that kind there,” I replied.

His face fell, but brightened again instantly.  He appealed to the Celebrity.

“How about it, old man?” said he.

The Celebrity answered, with becoming modesty, that the Asquithians were benighted.  They had never had any one to show them how to enjoy life.  But there was hope for them.

“That’s it,” exclaimed my client, slapping his thigh, and turning triumphantly to me, he continued, “You’re all right, Crocker, and know enough to win a damned big suit, but you’re not the man to steer a delicate thing of this kind.”

This is how, to my infinite relief, the Celebrity came to engineer the matter of the housewarming; and to him it was much more congenial.  He accepted the task cheerfully, and went about it in such a manner as to leave no doubt in my mind as to its ultimate success.  He was a master hand at just such problems, and this one had a double attraction.  It pleased him to be thought the arbiter of such a worthy cause, while he acquired a prominence at Asquith which satisfied in some part a craving which he found inseparable from incognito.

His tactics were worthy of a skilled diplomatist.  Before we left Mohair that day he had exacted as a condition that Mr. Cooke should not appear at the inn or in its vicinity until after the entertainment.  To this my client readily pledged himself with that absolute freedom from suspicion which formed one of the most admirable traits of his character.  The Celebrity, being intuitively quick where women were concerned, had surmised that Mrs. Cooke did not like him; but as her interests in the affair of the cotillon coincided with those of Mr. Cooke, she was available as a means to an end.  The Celebrity deemed her, from a social standpoint, decidedly the better part of the Mohair establishment, and he contrived, by a system of manoeuvres I failed to grasp, to throw her forward while he kept Mr. Cooke in the background.