Almost before he was aware of it, he found himself Chairman of a General Committee, summoning a Sub-Committee of Ways and Means.

At the first meeting he announced that his lady had consented to set aside, throughout the winter months, one day a week from hunting, and offered Shaftesbury Hall as head-quarters of the Costume Committee.
Thereupon it was really astonishing with what alacrity not only the "best houses" around Merchester, but the upper-middle-class (its damsels especially) caught the contagion.

Within a week "Are you Pageantising ?" or, in more condensed slang, "Do you Padge ?" became the stock question at all social gatherings in the neighbourhood of the Close.

To this a stock answer would be-- "Oh, I don't know! I suppose so." Here the respondent would simulate a slight boredom.

"One will have to mix with the most impossible people, of course"-- Lady Shaftesbury had won great popularity by insisting that, in a business so truly national, no class distinctions were to be drawn--"but anyhow it will fill up the off-days this winter." Lady Shaftesbury herself, after some pretty deliberation, decided to enact the part of the Empress Maud, and escape on horseback from King Stephen of Blois.