The governor arrived very late, with his fingers in his waistcoat pocket to indicate to all who saw him hurrying in between the crowded tables that he had been unavoidably detained and had spent the last half hour in agonized contemplation of his watch. As a matter of fact, he had been reading the papers at his club, wishing to cut down the hour of too much food and too much noise which he knew would precede the hour of too much speaking. He knew he would sit next to Mrs. Galton, whom he esteemed as a wise and good philanthropist but dreaded as a companion.
Everything began as he feared. He took his place on Mrs. Galton's right, with an apology for having been detained--unavoidably. It had looked at one time as if he could not get there, but of course his feeling for the great work----
Mrs. Galton, who had been through all this hundreds of times and knew he had never intended to arrive a minute earlier than he did, smiled warmly, and said how fortunate they counted themselves in having obtained an hour of the time of a man whom all the world----
On the contrary, the governor esteemed it a privilege to speak on behalf of a cause which commanded the sympathy----
It was a turning point, indeed, in the history of any cause, when a man like the governor----
They would have gone on like this through luncheon, but at this moment a sudden rustling at his side made the governor turn, and there--later a good deal than he had contrived to be--was Lydia, Lydia in a tight plain dress and a small plumed hat that made her look like a crested serpent. Mrs. Galton introduced them, and with a sigh of relief settled back to eating her lunch and running over her own introductory remarks in the comfortable certainty that the governor would give her no more trouble.
He didn't. He looked at Lydia, and all his heavy politeness dropped from him. His eyes twinkled, and he said, "Come, my dear young lady, let us save time by your telling me who you are and what you do and why you are here."
"I think," she said, "that that is the best conversational opening I ever heard. Well, I suppose I ought to say that I am here to listen to you."
"Yes, yes--perhaps," answered Albee, with a somewhat political wave of his hand, "in the same sense in which I came here to meet you--because fate, luck, divine interposition arranged it so. But why, according to your own limited views, are you here?"