"I'm thinking of Harry. If the general election comes on in September--and every one seems to think it will-- You promised you would let us inundate you with electioneering." "But do you think she----" "She will be dreadfully in the way." She added after an interval, "She stops my working." "But, my dear!" "She's out of harmony," said Adeline. Mrs. Bunting looked out of her window at the tamarisk and the sea. "I'm sure I wouldn't do anything to hurt Harry's prospects. You know how enthusiastic we all are. Randolph would do anything. But are you sure she will be in the way?" "What else can she be?" "She might help even." "Oh, help!" "She might canvass. She's very attractive, you know, dear." "Not to me," said Miss Glendower. "I don't trust her." "But to some people. And as Harry says, at election times every one who can do anything must be let do it. Cut them--do anything afterwards, but at the time--you know he talked of it when Mr. Fison and he were here. If you left electioneering only to the really nice people----" "It was Mr. Fison said that, not Harry. And besides, she wouldn't help." "I think you misjudge her there, dear. She has been asking----" "To help?" "Yes, and all about it," said Mrs. Bunting, with a transient pink. "She keeps asking questions about why we are having the election and what it is all about, and why Harry is a candidate and all that. She wants to go into it quite deeply. _I_ can't answer half the things she asks." "And that's why she keeps up those long conversations with Mr. Melville, I suppose, and why Fred goes about neglecting Mabel----" "My dear!" said Mrs. Bunting. "I wouldn't have her canvassing with us for anything," said Miss Glendower. "She'd spoil everything. She is frivolous and satirical. She looks at you with incredulous eyes, she seems to blight all one's earnestness.... I don't think you quite understand, dear Mrs. Bunting, what this election and my studies mean to me--and Harry. She comes across all that--like a contradiction." "Surely, my dear! I've never heard her contradict." "Oh, she doesn't contradict. But she-- There is something about her-- One feels that things that are most important and vital are nothing to her. Don't you feel it? She comes from another world to us." Mrs. Bunting remained judicial. Adeline dropped to a lower key again. "I think," she said, "anyhow, that we're taking her very easily. How do we know what she is? Down there, out there, she may be anything. She may have had excellent reasons for coming to land----" "My dear!" cried Mrs. Bunting. "Is that charity?" "How do they live?" "If she hadn't lived nicely I'm sure she couldn't behave so nicely." "Besides--coming here! She had no invitation----" "I've invited her now," said Mrs. Bunting gently. "You could hardly help yourself. I only hope your kindness----"