"Well, that's where you're wrong. I may be easy-going, but if it comes to parting brass-rags with Harold, or getting under Ermy's skin, I'll part with Harold."
"I wish you would part with him," said Mary.
"Yes, I dare say you do, but the trouble with you is that you've got a down on poor old Harold. But as a matter of fact he can be very useful to me. You'll sing a different tune if you wake up one morning and find I've made a packet, all through Harold White."
"I should still hate your having anything to do with him," said Mary uncompromisingly.
Chapter Three
Harold White redeemed his promise of returning the shot-gun early on the following morning by arriving with it in a hambone-case just as Ermyntrude was coming downstairs to breakfast. Following his usual custom, he walked in at the frontdoor, which was kept on the latch, without the formality of ringing the bell, and bade Ermyntrude a cheerful good morning. Ermyntrude said pointedly that her butler could not have heard the bell, but White was quite impervious to hints, and said heartily: "Oh, I didn't ring! I knew you wouldn't mind my just walking in. After all, we're practically relations, aren't we? You see, I've brought Wally's gun."
"As a matter of fact," said Ermyntrude, "it's not Wally's gun. It belonged to my first husband."
"Ah, sentimental value!" said White sympathetically. "Still, I've taken every care of it. Wally won't find his barrels dirty, for I cleaned them myself, and oiled them."
Ermyntrude thanked him frigidly. She was slightly mollified by the discovery that White had kept the gun in his hambone-case, but remarked with some bitterness that it was just like Wally not to have lent the gun in its own case. However, when White, who always made a point of agreeing with her, said that Wally was a careless chap, she remembered her loyalty, and remarking severely that Wally had more important thingss to think about, sailed into the breakfast-room, leaving White to restore the gun to its own case in the gun-room at the back of the house. "For since he makes so free with my house, I'm sure I don't see why I should dance attendance on him," she told Mary.
The entrance of the Prince into the room diverted her thoughts, and she at once asked solicitously how he had slept. It appeared that not only had he slept better than ever before in his life, but upon awakening he had been transported by the sound of a cock crowing in the distance. He knew then, perhaps for the first time, the magic of the English countryside. He gave Ermyntrude his word that he lay listening to cock answering cock in a sleepy trance of delight.