Tricorne was there, President of the Board of Trade, and Fleming, who held the purse-strings of the United Kingdom, two Ministers whom Wallingham had asked because they were supposed to have open minds--open, that is to say, for purposes of assimilation.

Wallingham considered, and rightly, that he had done very well for the deputation in getting these two.
There were other "colleagues" whose attendance he would have liked to compel; but one of them, deep in the country, was devoting his weekends to his new French motor, and the other to the proofs of a book upon Neglected Periods of Mahommedan History, and both were at the breaking strain with overwork.

Wallingham asked the deputation to dinner.

Lord Selkirk, who took them to Wallingham, dined them too, and invited them to one of those garden parties for the sumptuous scale of which he was so justly famed; the occasion we have already heard about, upon which royalty was present in two generations.

They travelled to it by special train, a circumstance which made them grave, receptive, and even slightly ceremonious with one another.