“I shouldn’t have thought it difficult,” said his sister.

“Besides,” Lorne confessed, “I expect it was easier to like him when you were inclined to like everybody.  A person feels more critical of a visitor, especially when he’s had advantages,” he added honestly.  “I expect we don’t care about having to acknowledge ’em so very much—­that’s what it comes to.”

“I don’t see them,” said Advena.  “Mr Hesketh seems well enough in his way, fairly intelligent and anxious to be pleasant.  But I can’t say I find him a specially interesting or valuable type.”

“Interesting, you wouldn’t.  But valuable—­well, you see, you haven’t been in England—­you haven’t seen them over there, crowds of ’em, piling up the national character.  Hesketh’s an average, and for an average he’s high.  Oh, he’s a good sort—­and he just smells of England.”

“He seems all right in his politics,” said John Murchison, filling his pipe from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece.  “But I doubt whether you’ll find him much assistance the way he talks of.  Folks over here know their own business —­they’ve had to learn it.  I doubt if they’ll take showing from Hesketh.”

“They might be a good deal worse advised.”

“That may be,” said Mr Murchison, and settled down in his armchair behind the Dominion.

“I agree with Father,” said Advena.  “He won’t be any good, Lorne.”

“Advena prefers Scotch,” remarked Stella.

“I don’t know.  He’s full of the subject,” said Lorne.  “He can present it from the other side.”

“The side of the British exporter?” inquired his father, looking over the top of the Dominion with unexpected humour.

“No, sir.  Though there are places where we might talk cheap overcoats and tablecloths and a few odds and ends like that.  The side of the all-British loaf and the lot of people there are to eat it,” said Lorne.  “That ought to make a friendly feeling.  And if there’s anything in the sentiment of the scheme,” he added, “it shouldn’t do any harm to have a good specimen of the English people advocating it.  Hesketh ought to be an object-lesson.”

“I wouldn’t put too much faith in the object-lesson,” said John Murchison.

“Neither would I,” said Stella emphatically.  “Mister Alfred Hesketh may pass in an English crowd, but over here he’s just an ignorant young man, and you’d better not have him talking with his mouth at any of your meetings.  Tell him to go and play with Walter Winter.”

“I heard he was asking at Volunteer Headquarters the other night,” remarked Alec, “how long it would be before a man like himself, if he threw in his lot with the country, could expect to get nominated for a provincial seat.”

“What did they tell him?” asked Mr Murchison, when they had finished their laugh.

“I heard they said it would depend a good deal on the size of the lot.”

“And a little on the size of the man,” remarked Advena.