The Klondike person acknowledged the thing with a faintly gracious nod. It carried an air, despite the slightness of it. Cousin Egbert was more cordial.
“Pleased to meet you, Lord!” said he, and grasped the newcomer’s hand. “Come on, set in with us and have some coffee and a cigar. Here, Jeff, bring the lord a good cigar. We was just talking about you that minute. How do you like our town? Say, this here Kulanche Valley——” I lost the rest. His lordship had seated himself. At his own table Belknap-Jackson writhed acutely. He was lighting a second cigarette—the first not yet a quarter consumed!
At once the four began to be thick as thieves, though it was apparent his lordship had eyes only for the woman. Coffee was brought. His lordship lighted his cigar. And now the word had so run from Mrs. Belknap-Jackson that all eyes were drawn to this table. She had created her sensation and it had become all at once more of one than she had thought. From Mrs. Judge Ballard’s table I caught her glare at her unconscious mother. It was not the way one’s daughter should regard one in public.
Presently contriving to pass the table again, I noted that Cousin Egbert had changed his form of address.
“Have some brandy with your coffee, Earl. Here, Jeff, bring Earl and all of us some lee-cures.” I divined the monstrous truth that he supposed himself to be calling his lordship by his first name, and he in turn must have understood my shocked glance of rebuke, for a bit later, with glad relief in his tones, he was addressing his lordship as “Cap!” And myself he had given the rank of colonel!
The Klondike person in the beginning finely maintained her reserve. Only at the last did she descend to vivacity or the use of her eyes. This later laxness made me wonder if, after all, she would feel bound to pay his lordship the respect he was wont to command from her class.
“You and poor George are rather alike,” I overheard, “except that he uses the single ‘what’ and you use the double. Hasn’t he any right to use the double ‘what’ yet, and what does it mean, anyway? Tell us.”
“What, what!” demanded his lordship, a bit puzzled.
“But that’s it! What do you say ‘What, what’ for? It can’t do you any good.”
“What, what! But I mean to say, you’re having me on. My word you are—spoofing, I mean to say. What, what! To be sure. Chaffing lot, you are!” He laughed. He was behaving almost with levity.