Lewis Elliot was a man of forty-five, tall and thin and inclined to stoop.  He had shortsighted blue eyes and a shy, kind smile.  He was not a sociable man, and resented being dragged from his books to attend a dinner-party.  Like most people he was quite incapable of saying No to Mrs. Duff-Whalley when that lady desired an answer in the affirmative, but he had condemned himself roundly to himself as a fool as he drove down the glen from Laverlaw.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley always gave a long and pretentious meal, and expected everyone to pay for their invitation by being excessively bright and chatty.  It was not in the power of the present guests to be either the one thing or the other.  Mrs. Jowett was pensive and sweet, and inclined to be silent; her husband gave loud barks of disagreement at intervals; Mr. Jackson enjoyed his dinner and answered when spoken to, while Lewis Elliot was rendered almost speechless by the flood of talk his hostess poured over him.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Elliot,” she remarked in a pause, “that the people I wanted to meet you couldn’t come.  I asked Sir John and Lady Tweedie, but they were engaged—­so unfortunate, for they are such an acquisition.  Then I asked the Olivers, and they couldn’t come.  You would really wonder where the engagements come from in this quiet neighbourhood.”  She gave a little unbelieving laugh.  “I had evidently chosen an unfortunate evening for the County.”

It was trying for everyone:  for Mr. Elliot, who was left with the impression that people were apt to be engaged when asked to meet him; for the Jowetts, who now knew that they had received a “fiddler’s bidding,” and for Mr. Jackson, who felt that he was only there because nobody else could be got.

There was a blank silence, which Lewis Elliot broke by laughing cheerfully.  “That absurd rhyme came into my head,” he explained.  “You know: 

  “’Miss Smarty gave a party,
    No one came. 
    Her brother gave another,
    Just the same.’”

Then, feeling suddenly that he had not improved matters, he fell silent.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, rearing her head like an affronted hen, “the difficulty, I assure you, is not to find guests but to decide which to select.”

“Quite so, quite so, naturally,” murmured Mr. Jackson soothingly; he had laughed at the rhyme and felt apologetic.  Then, losing his head completely under the cold glance his hostess turned on him, he added, “Go ye into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.”

Mrs. Jowett took a bit of toast and broke it nervously.  She was never quite at ease in Mrs. Duff-Whalley’s company.  Incapable of an unkind thought or a bitter word, so refined as to be almost inaudible, she felt jarred and bumped in her mind after a talk with that lady, even as her body would have felt after bathing in a rough sea among rocks.  Realising that the conversation had taken an unfortunate turn, she tried to divert it into more pleasing channels.