“I always get around them that way,” he said with an expression of the brightest cunning. “She used to have the laugh on me because I got so much counterfeit money handed to me. Now I don’t take any change at all.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Quite right, sir.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” he added as we ascended to the Floud’s drawing-room, though why his mind should have flown to this brutal sport, if it be a sport, was quite beyond me. At the door he paused and hissed at me: “Remember, no matter what she says, if you treat me white I’ll treat you white.” And before I could frame any suitable response to this puzzling announcement he had opened the door and pushed me in, almost before I could remove my cap.
Seated at the table over coffee and rolls was Mrs. Effie. Her face brightened as she saw me, then froze to disapproval as her glance rested upon him I was to know as Cousin Egbert. I saw her capable mouth set in a straight line of determination.
“You did your very worst, didn’t you?” she began. “But sit down and eat your breakfast. He’ll soon change that.” She turned to me. “Now, Ruggles, I hope you understand the situation, and I’m sure I can trust you to take no nonsense from him. You see plainly what you’ve got to do. I let him dress to suit himself this morning, so that you could know the worst at once. Take a good look at him—shoes, coat, hat—that dreadful cravat!”
“I call this a right pretty necktie,” mumbled her victim over a crust of toast. She had poured coffee for him.
“You hear that?” she asked me. I bowed sympathetically.
“What does he look like?” she insisted. “Just tell him for his own good, please.”
But this I could not do. True enough, during our short ride he had been reminding me of one of a pair of cross-talk comedians I had once seen in a music-hall. This, of course, was not a thing one could say.
“I dare say, Madam, he could be smartened up a bit. If I might take him to some good-class shop——”