Yet, from the first, Hamil had been aware of all that was behind this unstudied frankness, this friendly vigour.  There was a man, there—­every inch a man, but exactly of what sort the younger man had not yet decided.

* * * * *

A faded and very stout lady, gowned with elaborate simplicity, yet somehow suggesting well-bred untidiness, rolled toward them, propelled in a wheeled-chair by a black servant.

“Dear,” said Mr. Cardross, “this is Mr. Hamil.”  And Mrs. Cardross offered him her chubby hand and said a little more than he expected.  Then, to her husband, languidly: 

“They’re playing tennis, Neville.  If Mr. Hamil would care to play there are tennis-shoes belonging to Gray and Acton.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cardross,” said Hamil, “but, as a matter of fact, I am not yet acclimated.”

“You feel a little sleepy?” drawled Mrs. Cardross, maternally solicitous; “everybody does for the first few days.”  And to her husband:  “Jessie and Cecile are playing; Shiela must be somewhere about—­You will lunch with us, Mr. Hamil?  There’s to be a tennis luncheon under the oaks—­we’d really like to have you if you can stay.”

Hamil accepted as simply as the invitation was given; Mrs. Cardross exchanged a few words with her husband in that perfectly natural drawl which at first might have been mistaken for languid affectation; then she smiled at Hamil and turned around in her basket chair, parasol tilted, and the black boy began slowly pedalling her away across the lawn.

“We’ll step over to the tennis-courts,” said Cardross, replacing the straw hat which he had removed to salute his wife; “they’re having a sort of scratch-tournament I believe—­my daughters and some other young people.  I think you’ll find the courts rather pretty.”

The grounds were certainly quaint; spaces for four white marl courts had been cleared, hewn out of the solid jungle which walled them in with a noble living growth of live oak, cedar, magnolia, and palmetto.  And on these courts a very gay company of young people in white were playing or applauding the players while the snowy balls flew across the nets and the resonant blows of the bats rang out.

And first Mr. Cardross presented Hamil to his handsome married daughter, Mrs. Acton Carrick, a jolly, freckled, young matron who showed her teeth when she smiled and shook hands like her father; and then he was made known to the youngest daughter, Cecile Cardross, small, plump, and sun-tanned, with ruddy hair and mischief in every feature.

There was, also, a willowy Miss Staines and a blond Miss Anan, and a very young Mr. Anan—­a brother—­and a grave and gaunt Mr. Gatewood and a stout Mr. Ellison, and a number of others less easy to remember.

“This wholesale introduction business is always perplexing,” observed Cardross; “but they’ll all remember you, and after a time you’ll begin to distinguish them from the shrubbery.  No”—­as Mrs. Carrick asked Hamil if he cared to play—­“he would rather look on this time, Jessie.  Go ahead; we are not interrupting you; where is Shiela—­”