Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/159

Rh smile. "Being quite unable to realize what has happened, he will be equally unable to realize what is going to happen. We may speak before him as before a babe in arms; the amenities of the situation are forever beyond him."

"I guess I always been able to hold up my head when I felt like it," put in Cousin Egbert, now again both sullen and puzzled. Once more he threw out his encouragement to me: "Don't let 'em run any bluffs, Bill! They can't touch you, and they know it."

"'Touch him,'" murmured Mrs. Belknap-Jackson with an able sneer. "My dear, what a trial he must have been to you. I never knew. He's as bad as the mater, actually."

"And such hopes I had of him in Paris," replied Mrs. Effie, "when he was taking up Art and dressing for dinner and everything!"

"I can be pushed just so far!" muttered the offender darkly.

There was now a ring at the door which I took the liberty of answering, and received two notes from a messenger. One bore the address of Mrs. Floud and the other was quite astonishingly to myself, the name preceded by "Colonel."

"That's Jen' Ballard's stationery!" cried Mrs. Belknap-Jackson. "Trust her not to lose one second in getting busy!"

"But he mustn't answer the door that way," exclaimed her husband as I handed Mrs. Effie her note.

They were indeed both from my acquaintance of the night before. Receiving permission to read my own, I found it to be a dinner invitation for the following Friday. Mrs. Effie looked up from hers.