“That’ll do,” said the major. “I’ll just run over the tax-list; it’ll be quicker. There are kindly people here, sah,” he went on, “but after all, it’s a narrow circle. We have our little pleasures and courtships and scandals and we are satisfied with them. We’re not gadabouts. Our girls haven’t all flirted around Europe and they don’t talk of the Pincio and the Champs Elys es as if they were Capitol Hill and Madison Street in Richmond. But if I may say so, sah, I think in Virginia we get a little closer to life as God Almighty intended it than people in some of your big cities.” “Come, Bristow,” interrupted the doctor, “tell [Pg 209]the truth. This dog-gone borough is as dull as a mud fence sticking with tadpoles. There isn’t a man in it with a soul above horse-flesh.” The doctor’s shafts to-day, however, glanced off the major’s buckler of geniality like the Lilliputian arrows from Gulliver’s eye-glass. “I hope you ride, Mr. Valiant?” the latter asked genially. “I’m fond of it,” said Valiant, “but I have no horse as yet.” “I was thinking,” pursued the major, “of the coming tournament.” “Tournament?” The doctor cut in. “A ridiculous cock-a-doodle-do which gives the young bucks a chance to rig out in silly toggery and prance their colts before a lot of petticoats!” “It’s an annual affair,” explained the major; “a kind of spectacle. For many years, by the way, it has been held on a part of this estate—perhaps you will have no objection to its use this season?—and at night there is a dance at the Country Club. By the way, you must let me introduce you there to-morrow. I’ve taken the liberty already of putting your name up.” “Good lord!” growled the doctor, aside. “He counts himself young! If I’d reached your age, Bristow—” “You have,” said the major, nettled. “Four years ago!—As I was saying, Mr. Valiant, they [Pg 210]ride for a prize. It’s a very ancient thing—I’ve seen references to it in a colonial manuscript in the Byrd Library at Westover. No doubt it’s come down directly from the old jousts.” “You don’t mean to say,” cried his hearer in genuine astonishment, “that Virginia has a lineal descendant of the tourney?” The major nodded. “Yes. Certain sections of Kentucky used to have it, too, but it has died out there. It exists now only in this state. It’s a curious thing that the old knightly meetings of the middle ages should survive to-day only on American soil and in a corner of Virginia.” Doctor Southall, meanwhile, had set his gaze on the litter of pamphlets. He turned with an appreciative eye. “You’re beginning in earnest. The Agricultural Department. And the Congressional frank.” “I’ve gone to the fountainhead,” said Valiant. “I’m trying to find out possibilities. I’ve sent samples of the soil. It’s lain fallow so long it has occurred to me it may need special treatment.”