The day was brilliant, but Harriet, defended against all odds by Donegal, Burberry and K., with a huge carriage-umbrella tucked under her arm, insisted stoutly that you never could tell. It always rained at Bluecaster Show--everybody knew that--and it would rain to-day; this in a tone indicating that it jolly well better had. Dandy, dressed with the delicacy of a Blue Wyandotte, felt abashed until she discovered that Harriet was practically alone in her gloomily-barometric choice of attire. Ringed in its green cup brimmed by blue hills, the scene had its own untheatrical charm, but its thrills were mild and long in arriving. Business went forward with little regard to spectators, and after a tedious half-hour, during which four horses, eight cows and twelve sheep stared solemnly at the crowd, while the whole Committee got down into the ring and wrangled about them, she found her thoughts straying to the social ethics of the meeting. There was a rail dividing the stand, cleaving the two-shilling section from the half-crown. This puzzled her, as the planks on either side were equally hard. Harriet’s explanation that you got sixpenny-worth more water-jump scarcely seemed to go deep enough. The grinders were half-crowners, she noticed, glued as a rule to the side of some local celebrity, such as the Member or the High Sheriff or the President; but the leeches only ran to two shillings--with the exception of Helwise, who was inviting Bluecaster to come and see how badly they wanted a new bath at Crabtree, when she wasn’t issuing orders to Lanty in the ring. Apart from his aunt, Lancaster was having the usual harried time of an authority on these occasions. When he wasn’t helping or looking for the judge, he was calling competitors or catching stray sheep, artfully eluding business-demands from button-holing tenants, or rescuing the usual veterans of the ring who stand so trustingly behind the hurdles. He knew everybody, it seemed, just as Helwise, talking baths, knew everybody, and Harriet, flourishing her clumsy gamp. Names passing from mouth to mouth were no more than empty sound to herself. The fact that Seaman was jumping did not fill her with anticipation, nor could the recent death of a well-known horseman move her to a sense of loss. She began to be rather bored by the unhurrying succession of events, and checked herself guiltily in a yawn. The judge of the moment was having a real day out with a fine hunter-class, and had to be practically dragged off each horse in turn. Hamer was drinking in Harriet’s observations like an eager child, but he was as new to it all as his daughter.