He looked at her with an imperturbable good humour that knew perfectly well how to hold its own. “Lavender comes to me for instructions. There are some things, Gertrude, that you don’t quite understand. It is now just ten minutes to three.” The wife shrugged her shoulders over the hopelessness of this eccentric male. For the moment she was intensely irritated, being a woman with a craze for managing everybody and everything, and for striking the dominant note in the community in which she happened to live. “Well, I think it is abominable——” “What?” “Making me look foolish, and keeping these men at work, when I had arranged for them to go to the fête. The whole neighbourhood will be represented. We have made a particular effort to get all the working people——” Canterton remained genial and undisturbed. “I think I told you that more than half the men are Radicals.” “All the more reason for getting into touch with them.” “Voluntarily, perhaps. The men were needed here.” “But I had seen Lavender——” “I don’t want to hurry you, but if you are to be there at three——” She jerked her head, twitching her black hat farther off her forehead. “Sometimes you are impossible. You won’t interest yourself in life, and you won’t let others be interested.” “I’m not quite so bad as that, Gertrude. I am no good at social affairs. You have the genius for all that.” “Exactly. But even in the matter of helping things on. Well, it is no use talking to you. I promised Lady Marchendale that I would be on the platform by three.” “You haven’t much time.” “No, I haven’t.” She let him see that she despaired of his personality, and walked off towards the house, a long, thin, yellow figure, like a vibrating wire that was always a blurr of egotistical energy. She was angry, with the pinched and cold anger of a thin-natured woman. James was impossible, only fit to be left like a great bear among his trees and shrubs. Besides he had made her look a fool. These sixty men were to have followed her carriage, an impressive body of retainers tramping after her into Lady Marchendale’s grounds.