Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/111

Rh "That's Cousin Egbert's man!" called Mrs. Effie. But even then the powerful creature would not release me until her daughter had called sharply, "Maw! Don't you hear? He's a man!" Nevertheless she gave my hand a parting shake before turning to the others.

"Glad to see a human face at last!" she boomed. "Here I've been a month in this dinky hole," which I thought strange, since we were surrounded by league upon league of the primal wilderness. "Cooped up like a hen in a barrel," she added in tones that must have carried well out over the lake.

"Cousin Egbert's man," repeated Mrs. Effie, a little ostentatiously, I thought. "Poor Egbert's so dependent on him—quite helpless without him."

Cousin Egbert muttered sullenly to himself as he assisted me with the bags. Then he straightened himself to address them.

"Won him in a game of freeze-out," he remarked quite viciously.

"Does he doll Sour-dough up like that all the time?" demanded the Mixer, "or has he just come from a masquerade? What's he represent, anyway?" And these words when I had taken especial pains and resorted to all manner of threats to turn him smartly out in the walking-suit of a pioneer!

"Maw!" cried our hostess, "do try to forget that dreadful nickname of Egbert's."

"I sure will if he keeps his disguise on," she rumbled back. "The old horned toad is most as funny as Jackson."

Really, I mean to say, they talked most amazingly. I