"'Kate, he got kind of bored with the whole business after that. He hadn't actually eat one yet, and mebbe that was all that kept him going—wanting to see if they'd taste any better than regular rabbits. But you bet they knew now that Kate wasn't any kind of a rabbit. They didn't have any more arguments on that point—they knew darn' well he didn't have a drop of rabbit blood in his veins. Oh, he's some beetle-cat, all right!'
"That's Cousin Egbert for you! Can you beat him—changing round and being proud of this mixed marriage that he had formerly held to be a scandal!
"Well, I go back home, and here is mother waiting for me. And she's a changed woman. She's actually give up trying to make anything out of her chits, because after considerable browbeating and third-degree stuff, they've come through with the whole evil conspiracy—how they'd got her prize-winning beagles licked by a common cat that wouldn't be let into any bench show on earth! Her spirit was broke.
"'My poor son,' she says, 'I shall allow to go his silly way after this outrageous bit of double-dealing. I think it useless to strive further with him. He has not only confessed all the foul details, but he came brazenly out with the assertion that a man has a right to lead his own life—and he barely thirty!'
"She goes on to say that it's this terrible twentieth-century modernism that has infected him. She says that, first woman sets up a claim to live her own life, and now men are claiming the same right, even one as carefully raised and guarded as her boy has been; and what are we coming to? But, anyway, she did her best for him.
"Pretty soon Broadmoor was closed like you seen it to-day. Sister is now back in Boston, keeping tabs on orchestras and attending lectures on the higher birds; and brother at last has his orchid ranch somewhere down in California. He's got one pet orchid that I heard cost twelve thousand dollars—I don't know why. But he's very happy living his own life. The last I heard of mother she was exploring the headwaters of the Amazon River, hunting crocodiles and jaguars and natives, and so on.
"She was a good old sport, though. She showed that by the way she simmered down about Cousin Egbert's cat before she left. At first, she wanted to lay for it and put a bullet through its cowardly heart. Then she must of seen the laugh was on her, all right; for what did she do? Why, the last thing she done was to box up all these silver cups her beagles had won and send 'em over to Kate, in care of his owner—all the eye-cups and custard bowls, and so on. Cousin Egbert shows 'em off to every one.
"'Just a few cups that Kate won,' he'll say. 'I want to tell you he's some beetle-cat! Look what he's come up to—and out of nothing, you might say!'"