“Eh?” I said, startled to this outburst by his strange words.
“Good old George!” exclaimed his lordship. “Owe it all to the old juggins, what, what!”
The Klondike person spoke. I heard her voice as a bell pealing through breakers at sea. I mean to say, I was now fair dazed.
“Not to old George,” said she. “To old Ruggles!”
“To old Ruggles!” promptly cried the Senator, and they drank.
Muddled indeed I was. Again in my eventful career I felt myself tremble; I knew not what I should say, any savoir faire being quite gone. I had received a crumpler of some sort—but what sort?
My sleeve was touched. I turned blindly, as in a nightmare. The Hobbs cub who was my vestiare was handing me our evening paper. I took it from him, staring—staring until my knees grew weak. Across the page in clarion type rang the unbelievable words:
BRITISH PEER WINS AMERICAN BRIDE
His Lordship Tenth Earl of Brinstead to Wed One of Red Gap’s
Fairest Daughters
My hands so shook that in quick subterfuge I dropped the sheet, then stooped for it, trusting to control myself before I again raised my face. Mercifully the others were diverted by the journal. It was seized from me, passed from hand to hand, the incredible words read aloud by each in turn. They jested of it!
“Amazing chaps, your pressmen!” Thus the tenth Earl of Brinstead, while I pinched myself viciously to bring back my lost aplomb. “Speedy beggars, what, what! Never knew it myself till last night. She would and she wouldn’t.”