“Yes, sir.”
“Listen carefully—I’m quite serious. In future you will try to address me as if I were your equal. Ah! rather you will try to address me as if you were my equal. I dare say it will come to you easily after a bit of practice. Your employers will wish you to address them in the same manner. You will cultivate toward us a manner of easy friendliness—remember I’m entirely serious—quite as if you were one of us. You must try to be, in short, the Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles that wretched penny-a-liner has foisted upon these innocent people. We shall thus avert a most humiliating contretemps.”
The thing fair staggered me. I fell weakly into the chair by which I had stood, for the first time in a not uneventful career feeling that my savoir faire had been overtaxed.
“Quite right,” he went on. “Be seated as one of us,” and he amazingly proffered me his cigarette case. “Do take one, old chap,” he insisted as I weakly waved it away, and against my will I did so. “Dare say you’ll fancy them—a non-throat cigarette especially prescribed for me.” He now held a match so that I was obliged to smoke. Never have I been in less humour for it.
“There, not so hard, is it? You see, we’re getting on famously.”
“Ain’t I always said Bill was a good mixer?” called Cousin Egbert, but his gaucherie was pointedly ignored.
“Now,” continued Belknap-Jackson, “suppose you tell us in a chatty, friendly way just what you think about this regrettable affair.” All sat forward interestedly.
“But I met what I supposed were your villagers,” I said; “your small tradesmen, your artisans, clerks, shop-assistants, tenant-farmers, and the like, I’d no idea in the world they were your county families. Seemed quite a bit too jolly for that. And your press-chap—preposterous, quite! He quizzed me rather, I admit, but he made it vastly different. Your pressmen are remarkable. That thing is a fair crumpler.”
“But surely,” put in Mrs. Effie, “you could see that Mrs. Judge Ballard must be one of our best people.”
“I saw she was a goodish sort,” I explained, “but it never occurred to me one would meet her in your best houses. And when she spoke of entertaining me I fancied I might stroll by her cottage some fair day and be asked in to a slice from one of her own loaves and a dish of tea. There was that about her.”