"No, Mr. Halmar. I have it."
"You! Oh, Lady Maud--I am sorry."
"You well may be. I have put it into my own room because the professor declared it was genuine--a real savage fate. No--that isn't true, so don't distress yourself. I took a fancy to it. I have a habit of taking fancies to things and to people; so there it shall remain."
Rick's face lit up. "Let me make you a better one," he began.
"I said, Mr. Halmar, that I took a fancy to it; and now, don't you think you should make your confession like a good boy?"
He made it very prettily, but with a frank enjoyment of the mistake, which was infectious. So much so, that the chief sufferer, stimulated into unusual playfulness by Miss Willina's wit, actually went into the house for his discredited belief and brought it out for her to burn.
So, with much laughter, they stood round the fire, causing poor James almost to burst under his efforts after dignity, till suddenly, with something between a chuckle and a cough, the butler himself gave way into the remark that "I 'adn't made a Guy Forks--kck-kh-kh--since 'e was a boy,--kh-kh-kh,--but if 'er ladyship pleased, Jeames could run round to the gun-room for some powder and 'e'd 'ave some squibs ready in no time."
So Numbo Jumbo was burnt with all the honours, and the butler, going back for his own tea to the housekeeper's room, hummed, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November," until the cook, with a snort, asked wherever to goodness he had picked up such a vulgar ditty.
"Now I have no doubt all you learned people think me very foolish," said Miss Willina, drawing on her gloves with the air of one who has completed a good work; "but I really am immensely relieved in my mind. I had a presentiment about that devil of Rick's; besides, these old superstitions invariably have their origin in some fundamental fact or law of Nature. Don't you think so, professor?"
"Undoubtedly, my dear madam; the Folklore Society--"