Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/120

106 to find them. I here glanced at the backwoods person referred to and at once did not like the look in his eyes. He winked swiftly at Cousin Egbert, who coughed rather formally.

"Let Ruggles help you to change," continued Mrs. Effie. "He's awfully handy. Poor Cousin Egbert is perfectly helpless now without him."

So I followed our host to his own detached hut, though feeling a bit queer at being passed about in this manner, I mean to say, as if I were a basket of fruit. Yet I found it a grateful change to be serving one who knew our respective places and what I should do for him. His manner of speech, also, was less barbarous than that of the others, suggesting that he might have lived among our own people a fortnight or so and have tried earnestly to correct his deficiencies. In fact he remarked to me after a bit: "I fancy I talk rather like one of yourselves, what?" and was pleased as Punch when I assured him that I had observed this. He questioned me at length regarding my association with the Honourable George, and the houses at which we would have stayed, being immensely particular about names and titles.

"You'll find us vastly different here," he said with a sigh, as I held his coat for him. "Crude, I may say. In truth, Red Gap, where my interests largely confine me, is a town of impossible persons. You'll see in no time what I mean."

"I can already imagine it, sir," I said sympathetically.

"It's not for want of example," he added. "Scores of times I show them better ways, but they're eaten up with commercialism—money-grubbing."