"Britton is a faithful, obliging fellow, Mr. Pless. It isn't every Englishman who will gracefully submit to being chucked out of comfortable quarters to make room for others. We're a bit crowded, you know. He gave up his room like a gentleman and moved over temporarily into the other wing. He was afraid, don't you see, that the baby might disturb my guests. A very thoughtful, dependable fellow."
"Yes," said he, "a very dependable fellow, Mr. Smart. My own man is much the same sort of a chap. He also is married." Did I imagine that he chuckled?
Half an hour later when I rejoined my guests after a session with Conrad Schmick, I was somewhat annoyed by the dig George Hazzard planted in my devoted ribs, and the furtive wink he gave me. The two ladies were regarding me with expressions that seemed pretty well divided between disapproval and mirth. The baron, whose amicable relations with Mr. Pless evidently had been restored, was grinning broadly at me.
And the Countess imperiously had directed me to supply her with all the scandal of the hour!
CHAPTER IX — I AM INVITED OUT TO DINNER
I sometimes wonder what would happen if I really had a mind of my own. Would I be content to exercise it capably? Would I cease to be putty in the hands of other people? I doubt it. Even a strong, obdurate mind is liable to connect with conditions that render it weak and pliable for the simple reason that it is sometimes easier to put up with a thing than to try to put it down. An exacting, arbitrary mind perhaps might evolve a set of resolutions that even the most intolerant would hesitate to violate, but for an easygoing, trouble-dodging brain like my own there is no such thing as tenacity of purpose, unless it be in the direction of an obfuscated tendency to maintain its own pitiful equilibrium. I try to keep an even ballast in my dome of thought and to steer straight through the sea of circumstance, a very difficult undertaking and sometimes hazardous.
A man with a firm, resolute grip on himself would have checked Mr. Pless and Baron Umovitch at the outset of their campaign to acquire undisputed possession of all the comforts and conveniences that the castle afforded.
He would have said no to their demands that all work about the place should be regulated according to their own life-long habits, which, among other things, included lying in bed till noon, going back to bed at three for a quiet nap, and staying up all night so that they might be adequately worn out by the time they went to bed in the first place.