As Alice looked round the little
assembly on the lawn, she felt for the first time the insignificance of
the men. The large Mr. Stocks was not at his best in such
surroundings. He was the typical townsman, and bore with him wherever
he went an atmosphere of urban dust and worry. He hungered for
ostentation, he could only talk well when he felt that he impressed his
hearers; Bertha, who was not easily impressed, he shunned like a plague.
The man, reflected the censorious Alice, had no shades or half-tones in
his character; he was all bald, strong, and crude. Now he was talking
to his hostess with the grace of the wise man unbending.
"I shall be pleased indeed to meet your nephew," he said. "I feel sure
that we have many interests in common. Do you say he lives near?"
Lady Manorwater, ever garrulous on family matters, readily enlightened
him. "Etterick is his, and really all the land round here. We simply
live on a patch in the middle of it. The shooting is splendid, and
Lewie is a very keen sportsman. His mother was my husband's sister, and
died when he was born. He is wonderfully unspoiled to have had such a
lonely boyhood."
"How did the family get the land?" he asked. It was a matter which
interested him, for democratic politician though he was, he looked
always forward to the day when he should own a pleasant country
property, and forget the troubles of life in the Nirvana of the
respectable.
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