The programme had been long arranged--the great Service in the Cathedral, the Ball in the Assembly Rooms, the Flower Show in the St. Leath Castle grounds, the Torchlight Procession, the Croquet Tournament, the School- children's Tea and the School Cricket-match. A fine programme, and the Jubilee Committee, with the Bishop, the Mayor, and the Countess of St. Leath for its presidents, had already held several meetings. Nevertheless, Glebeshire has a rather languishing climate. Polchester has been called by its critics "a lazy town," and it must be confessed that everything in connection with the Jubilee had been jogging along very sleepily until of a sudden this warm May-day arrived, and every one sprang into action. The Mayor called a meeting of the town branch of the Committee, and the Bishop out at Carpledon summoned his ecclesiastics, and Joan found a note from Gladys Sampson beckoning her to the Sampson house to do her share of the glorious work. It had been decided by the Higher Powers that it would be a charming thing for some of the younger Polchester ladies to have in charge the working of two of the flags that were to decorate the Assembly Room walls on the night of the Ball. Gladys Sampson, who, unlike her mother, never suffered from headaches, and was a strong, determined, rather masculine girl, soon had the affair in hand, and the party was summoned. I would not like to say that Polchester had a more snobbish spirit than other Cathedral towns, but there is no doubt that, thirty years ago, the lines were drawn very clearly indeed between the "Cathedral" and the "Others." "Cathedral" included not only the daughters of the Canons and what Mr. Martin, in his little town guide-book, called "General Ecclesiastical Phenomena," but also the two daughters of Puddifoot's sister, Grace and Annie Trudon; the three daughters of Roger McKenzie, the town lawyer; little Betty Callender, the only child of old, red-faced Major Callender; Mary and Amy Forrester, daughters of old Admiral Forrester; and, of course, the St. Leath girls. When Joan arrived, then, in the Deanery dining-room there was a fine gathering. Very unsophisticated they would all have been considered by the present generation. Lady Rose and Lady Mary, who were both of them nearer forty than thirty, had of course had some experience of London, and had been even to Paris and Rome. Of the "Others," at this time, only Betty Callender, who had been born in India, and the Forresters had been farther, in all their lives, than Drymouth. Their lives were bound, and happily bound, by the Polchester horizon. They lived in and for and by the local excitements, talks, croquet, bicycling (under proper guardianship), Rafiel or Buquay or Clinton in the summer, and the occasional (very, very occasional) performances of amateur theatricals in the Assembly Rooms.