"I don't know. Shall we go back to your rooms and sit a while?"

The exile's eyes gloomed suddenly.

"Not unless you insist on it. We should get back among the relics and I
should bore you. I'm not the man you used to know, Grantham."

"No?" said Loring. "I sha'n't be hypocritical enough to contradict you.
Nevertheless, you are my host. It is for you to say what you will do with
me until train time."

"We can kill an hour at the rally, if you like. You have seen the street
parade and heard the band play: it is only fair that you should see the
menagerie on exhibition."

Loring found his match-box and made a fresh light for his cigar.

"It's pretty evident that you and 'next-Governor' Bucks are on opposite
sides of the political fence," he observed.

"We are. I should think a good bit less of myself than I do--and that's
needless--if I trained in his company."

"Yet you will give him a chance to make a partizan of me? Well, come
along. Politics are not down on my western programme, but I'm here to see
all the new things."

The Gaston Opera House was a survival of the flush times, and barring a
certain tawdriness from disuse and neglect, and a rather garish effect