IV
As the Burgesses were reviewing the incidents of the day at dinner that evening, Mrs. Burgess remarked suddenly,
“Now that it’s all over, Web, do you think it was quite fair, really right?”
“You mean,” asked Webster, huskily, “that you’re not satisfied with the way it was handled?”
“Oh, not that! But it was almost too complete; and poor Mrs. Gurley must be horribly humiliated.”
“Crushed, I should say,” remarked Webster cheerfully. “This ought to hold her for a while.”
“But that fake delegation you had at the station to deceive Mrs. Gurley——”
“I beg your pardon,” Webster interrupted, “I assure you I had nothing to do with it.”
“Well, all I know is that just before dinner Mrs. Eastman called me up and said the Governor had just telephoned her that Mrs. Gurley tried to kiss the hand of some man she took for the Illyrian Minister of Foreign Affairs as he went through the station gates. And the man is nothing but a rubber in a Turkish bath. You wouldn’t have done that, Web, would you?”
“No, dear, I would not! For one thing, I wouldn’t have been smart enough to think it up.”