Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/129

Rh followed them, moaning: "Oh, oh, oh!" in the keenest distress.

At this I took to my own room in dire confusion, making no doubt I would presently be given in charge and left to languish in gaol, perhaps given six months' hard.

Cousin Egbert came to me in a little while and laughed heartily at my fear that anything legal would be done. He also made some ill-timed compliments on the neatness of the blow I had dealt Mr. Belknap-Jackson, but these I found in wretched taste and was begging him to desist, when the Mixer entered and began to speak much in the same strain.

"Don't you ever dare do a thing like that again," she warned me, "unless I got a ringside seat," to which I remained severely silent, for I felt my offence should not be made light of.

"Three rousing cheers!" exclaimed Cousin Egbert, whereat the two most unfeelingly went through a vivid pantomime of cheering.

Our host, I understood, had his dinner in bed that night, and throughout the evening, as I sat solitary in remorse, came the mocking strains of another of their American folksongs with the refrain:

I conceived it to be the Mixer and Cousin Egbert who did this and, considering the plight of our host, I thought it in the worst possible taste. I had raised my hand against the one American I had met who was at all times