“Nice story,” he said, “isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody must keep account of 'em.”
The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the telling than the reading of it would require.
“Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes,” said the host, “and take some yourself. Story cannot interest you—must be ancient history. Well—after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that face if they saw it now.”
Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin and dogged eyes.
“Man's loose in Poland now,” he added.
And that was the end of the story.
XIX
THE HIGH-WATER MARK
Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who, so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative—such men, at all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.