Jack and Olive and Frieda arrived before the other guests. They soon discovered that Mrs. Naxie--Captain MacDonnell's housekeeper--had arranged to serve tea in his living room. It was through Jack's suggestion that the arrangement was altered. "Please don't tell Mrs. Naxie, Bryan, that I spoke of it," she volunteered as soon as she beheld the preparations, "but don't you think the summer in England too short for people to spend an hour indoors when they can avoid it?" And Captain MacDonnell good naturedly agreed. As a matter of fact, Jack always poured tea for him when he had guests and she was able to be present, so she felt sufficiently at home to make her request. Captain MacDonnell's mother was an Irishwoman and his father a Scotchman. But they had both died when he was a little boy and he had spent the greater part of his boyhood with an old bachelor friend of his father's, who was his own guardian and had lived in the very house of which he was now the master. As neighbors he and Frank Kent had played together when they were small boys and had later gone to the same public school. Then Frank's illness sent him to the United States, where he was introduced into the lives of the Ranch girls, at about the same time his friend Bryan MacDonnell entered Cambridge and afterwards the army. But whenever he and Frank were together the old intimacy had continued, and Jack's coming had only seemed to turn their friendship into a three-cornered one. "Frank told me to tell you that he was sorry not to be able to come over with us this afternoon, Bryan," Jack announced a few moments later, when the four of them had gone out to select a place where tea could be served, "But for some reason or other he telephoned that he could not come down from London today. I don't know what is wrong with Frank lately. He has never been so absorbed in political matters. I am afraid Frieda and Olive will think he neglects his family disgracefully. Please tell them, Bryan, that he is sometimes an attentive husband." But as Captain MacDonnell did not answer at once, Olive remarked in a more serious tone than Lady Kent had used: "I think I am rather glad Frank takes his work as a member of Parliament as the most important thing he has to do. After all, helping to make the laws of one's country is a pretty serious occupation. Which do you think more serious--Captain MacDonnell, being a soldier and fighting when it is necessary to defend the laws, or making them in the beginning?" Captain MacDonnell smiled, but rather seriously. It occurred to Jack, who knew him so much better than the others, that Bryan did seem uncommonly grave this afternoon, in spite of his efforts to be an agreeable host. Then she took hold of Frieda's arm and they wandered off a short distance, leaving Olive and Captain MacDonnell to continue their conversation alone.