“Thank you, no,” said Ben. He wanted to be alone. Like all dominating people who don’t get their own way in an altruistic issue, his feelings were deeply wounded. He took his hat from the disapproving Tomes, and went out to the sea to think. He supposed he was going to think about David’s future and the terrible blow his paper had just received. As the door closed behind him, Eddie turned to Mr. Cord with a world of reproach in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I must say, sir, I think you were unnecessarily gentle with that fellow.” “Seemed to me a fine young fellow,” said Mr. Cord. “Asking him to lunch,” said Eddie. “I did that for Crystal,” replied Cord, getting up and slapping his pockets—a gesture which in some subconscious way he hoped would make Eddie go home. “She’s always so keen to meet new people. If she heard that the editor of _Liberty_ had been here while she was asleep and that I had not tried to keep him for her to see—whew!—she would make a scene.” “But she oughtn’t to see people like that,” protested Eddie, as if he were trying to talk sense in a madhouse. “That was what I was just explaining to you, Mr. Cord, when—” “So you were, Eddie, so you were,” said Mr. Cord. “Stay to lunch and tell Crystal. Or, rather,” he added, hastily glancing at the clock, “come back to lunch in an hour. I have to go now and see—” Mr. Cord hesitated for the fraction of a second—“the gardener. If you don’t see gardeners now and then and let them scold you about the weather and the Lord’s arrangement of the seasons, they go mad and beat their wives. See you later, Eddie,” and Mr. Cord stepped out through the French window. It was only great crises like these that led him to offer himself up to the attacks of his employees. A severe elderly man with a long, flat upper lip and side whiskers immediately sprang apparently from the earth and approached him. He had exactly the manner of resolute gloom that a small boy has when something has gone wrong at school and he wants his mother to drag it out of him. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “Morning, McKellar,” said Cord, gayly. “Everything’s all right, I suppose.” McKellar shook his head. Everything was about as far from all right as it well could be. The cook was a violent maniac who required peas to be picked so young that they weren’t worth the picking. Tomes and his footman were a band of malicious pirates who took pleasure in cutting for the table the very buds which McKellar was cherishing for the horticultural show. And as for the season—McKellar could not remember such a devastatingly dry August since he was a lad at home. “Why, McKellar, we had rain two days ago.” “You wouldn’t call that little mist rain, sir.” “And last week a perfect downpour.” “Ah, that’s the kind doesn’t sink into the soil.” Looking up critically at the heavens, McKellar expressed his settled conviction that in two weeks’ time hardly a blade or a shrub would be alive in the island at Newport.