“Oh, Hal, I can’t! Don’t send me to those people alone. What can I say to them?” “Patience, my dear, this is a world of woe. One day you will be châtelaine of this place and be giving garden-parties on your own account, so you’d better take the kindergarten course, and be thankful for the chance. Go on.” Patience walked unwillingly over to a group of four women seated under a drooping oak. She had forgotten the names of nine tenths of the guests, but she recognised Mrs. Laurence Gibbs, a plain rather dowdy little woman with sad face and abstracted gaze. Beside her on the rustic seat was a woman who gave a dominant impression of teeth: they fairly flashed in the shadows. In a chair sat a woman of remarkable prettiness. She would have been a beauty had her features been larger, so regular were they, so sweet her expression, so soft her colouring of pink and white and brown, so tall and full her figure. In another chair was a young woman of no beauty but much distinction. Her prematurely white hair was curled and tied at the base of her head with a black ribbon, realising an eighteenth century effect. Her face was dark and brilliant. She sat forward, her slim figure full of suppressed energy. She had been talking with much animation, but as Patience approached she paused abruptly. The pretty woman burst into a merry laugh. “Mrs. Lafarge was just remarking what hideous bores garden parties are,” she said audaciously. “Oh, you needn’t mind me,” said Patience, sitting down on the grass, as there was no other seat. “I quite agree with you.” “Oh, that’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Peele,” said Mrs. Lafarge, “and awfully mean of you, Mary Gallatin. Of course this is one of the loveliest places on the Hudson, and I love to come here; but there are not enough men. That’s the whole trouble.” “That always seems to be the cry with you American women,” said she of the teeth. “You have no resources. You should be independent of men. They seem to be of you.” “Perhaps you are driven to resources in Russia,” said Mrs. Gallatin, sweetly, “but your observation is faulty. We are spoiled over here, and that is the reason we grumble occasionally.” “You see we haven’t a large leisure class, as you have,” said Mrs. Gibbs, hastily. “I really think the reason men avoid garden parties is that they are afraid they might be betrayed into sentiment,” broke in Mrs. Lafarge. “They do protect themselves so fiercely. How did you ever make Tom Gallatin propose, Mary dear? He had the most ideal bachelor apartment in New York, and entrenched himself as in a fortress.” “Oh, one or two fall by the wayside every year, you know, and this time Gally happened to stumble over me. Poor Gally, he told me yesterday that he hadn’t seen me to speak to for a month. The idea of the lower classes grumbling. I should like to know who works as hard as we do. How do you manage to do the society and the charity, both?” she asked of Mrs. Gibbs. “Does Mr. Gibbs ever see _you_?”