Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/160

146 "It's all too true," she announced grimly. "We're asked to dinner and she earnestly hopes dear Colonel Ruggles will have made no other engagement. She also says hasn't he the darlingest English accent. Oh, isn't it a mess!"

"You see how right I am," said Belknap-Jackson.

"I guess we've got to go through with it," conceded Mrs. Effie.

"The pushing thing that Ballard woman is!" observed her friend.

"Ruggles!" exclaimed Belknap-Jackson, addressing me with sudden decision.

"Yes, sir."

"Listen carefully—I'm quite serious. In future you will try to address me as if I were your equal. Ah! rather you will try to address me as if you were my equal. I dare say it will come to you easily after a bit of practice. Your employers will wish you to address them in the same manner. You will cultivate toward us a manner of easy friendliness—remember I'm entirely serious—quite as if you were one of us. You musy [sic] try to be, in short, the Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles that wretched penny-a-liner has foisted upon these innocent people. We shall thus avert a most humiliating contretemps."

The thing fair staggered me. I fell weakly into the chair by which I had stood, for the first time in a not uneventful career feeling that my savoir faire had been overtaxed.

"Quite right," he went on. "Be seated as one of us," and he amazingly proffered me his cigarette case. "Do take one, old chap," he insisted as I weakly waved it away, and against my will I did so. "Dare say you'll fancy