At lunch-time Mrs. Freeland appeared, an easy-going, smiling lady, and we all sat down to a vast table covered with food and noisy with chatter. The great joke of the day--and in such families as these, where chaff is the grain of life (if I may so express it), each day produces its new joke--was their father's recent cleverness in the matter of the garden-party costume. "Have you heard," Jocelyn asked me, "father's absolutely topping idea?" and entered upon the history; but beneath the Freeland roof no narrator is permitted to get to the end of anything unaided. Every story is composite. This one ran something like this. "You see," Jocelyn began, "we all had an invitation to Lady Sydney's garden-party; and father wanted to go, but didn't know what to wear." "Because," Mona explained, "it wasn't an ordinary garden-party. It was in connection with father's great educational scheme." "Yes," said Mr. Freeland, "if there had been a nice little word like Tennis in the corner I should have had no qualms, but have gone in flannels, swinging a racket. But there wasn't, and a number of influential people were going to be there, largely to talk to me." "Swank!" whispered Joan. "So father turned on his wisdom-of-the-serpent tap," said Jocelyn, "with a vengeance. He began by dressing in tweeds with a straw hat." "Don't forget the white slip and spats," said Phillida. "Yes, and white spats. They're so white that beetles and other creeping things are blinded. It's like flashes of lightning down there." "Oh, get on!" said Mona. "Let me tell Mr. Falconer." "I assure you," said Mr. Freeland to me, "it's the tamest story you ever heard. The only chance of its being made attractive is for me to tell it." "Well," said Jocelyn, "that was what he wore. But he also put into the car a complete suit of the tail-coat and top-hat variety, and then Harris and he drove off. The rest of us had to get there as best we could in a fleet of cabs. Well, Harris and he drove off and pulled up outside the party gates to see the others go in and count the straw hats and the top hats." "It was very awkward," Mr. Freeland put in, "at first, because they came out equal. But then the toppers began to make the running, and when they were about six lengths ahead I decided that that was good enough, and so we turned into a narrow lane close by----" "Where"--Jocelyn took it up again--"father changed." "You see," Mona explained, "he'd started with his tweeds and straw hat." "Mr. Falconer knows that," said Jocelyn. "You can't make it too clear," Mona replied. "The whole story depends on that." "Well," Jocelyn went on, her face kindling with excitement, "he had no sooner changed and got nicely into his tail coat and things--and he really can look quite decent, although to-day you wouldn't think it--" "My dear," said Mrs. Freeland, "you mustn't say things like that. Your father always looks nice."