Mrs. Jimmie was wise enough to make no reply.
"He said if you would go to sleep for an hour you would feel better," she said. "So put on this thin coat, then I'll close the blinds and go out."
Jimmie looked at her quizzically. Then he slowly sat up and changed his coat without a word.
When he wakened his headache was gone. But he was unable to come down to dinner, and we saw him no more that day.
As he went to bed that night he said:
"I suppose you and Faith chuckled over getting your own way with my shoes and coat. But I want you to tell Faith that I stuck it out on the collar and that I only took it off when I went to bed!"
He was all right the next day, so we were spared the grief of being obliged to bury him in that collar.
So it came to be the last day of the Lombards' stay.
We had all grown exceedingly fond of the dear English people who had come so sweetly into the midst of an American home and adapted themselves to our way of living with such easy grace. No one would have believed, to see Lady Mary in her simple garden hat and cotton gown, that she was a court beauty, over whose hand royalty had often bent in gracious admiration. But it was true.
Nor was she deficient in a sense of humour, for she openly doted on Jimmie, and listened intently for his jokes, with the laudable intention of seeing them before they were explained to her, if she could.