Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin both came in before Dora did. Lorne found their conversation enchanting, though it was mostly about the difficulty of keeping the lawn tidy; they had had so much rain. Mrs Milburn assured him kindly that there was not such another lawn as his father’s in Elgin. How Mr Murchison managed to have it looking so nice always she could not think. Only yesterday she and Mr Milburn had stopped to admire it as they passed.
“Spring is always a beautiful time in Elgin,” she remarked. “There are so many pretty houses here, each standing in its own grounds. Nothing very grand, as I tell my friend, Miss Cham, from Buffalo where the residences are, of course, on quite a different scale; but grandeur isn’t everything, is it?”
“But you will be leaving for Great Britain very soon now, Mr Murchison,” said Miss Filkin. “Leaving Elgin and all its beauties! And I dare say you won’t think of them once again till you get back!”
“I hope I shall not be so busy as that, Miss Filkin.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure Mr Murchison won’t forget his native town altogether,” said Mrs Milburn, “though perhaps he won’t like it so well after seeing dear old England!”
“I expect,” said Lorne simply, “to like it better.”
“Well, of course, we shall all be pleased if you say that, Mr Murchison,” Mrs Milburn replied graciously. “We shall feel quite complimented. But I’m afraid you will find a great deal to criticize when you come back--that is, if you go at all into society over there. I always say there can be nothing like good English society.”
“I want to attend a sitting of the House,” Lorne said. “I hope I shall have time for that. I want to see those fellows handling their public business. I don’t believe I shall find our men so far behind, for point of view and grasp and dispatch. Of course there’s always Wallingham to make a standard for us all. But they haven’t got so many Wallinghams.”
“Wasn’t it Wallingham, Louisa, that Mr Milburn was saying at breakfast was such a dangerous man? So able, he said, but dangerous. Something to do with the tariff.”
“Oh?” said Lorne, and he said no more, for at that moment Dora came in. She came in looking very straight and graceful and composed. Her personal note was carried out in her pretty clothes, which hung and “sat” upon her like the rhythm of verses; they could fall no other way. She had in every movement the definite accent of young ladyhood; she was very much aware of herself, of the situation, and of her value in it, a setting for herself she saw it, and saw it truly. No one, from the moment she entered the room, looked at anything else.