Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/195

Rh social whirl, to seek repose among the glens and gorges of this cattle plantation, and there try to adjust myself more intelligently to my strange new environment. In the meantime, I hoped, something might happen to the dog of Mrs. Judson; or he might, perhaps, in my absence outlive his curious mania for me.

Mrs. Effie, whom I now consulted, after reading the letter of Cousin Egbert, proved to be in favour of my going to him to make one last appeal to his higher nature.

"If only he'd stick out there in the brush where he belongs, I'd let him stay," she explained. "But he won't stick; he gets tired after a while and drops in perhaps on the very night when we're entertaining some of the best people at dinner—and of course we're obliged to have him, though he's dropped whatever manners I've taught him and picked up his old rough talk, and he eats until you wonder how he can. It's awful! Sometimes I've wondered if it couldn't be adenoids—there's a lot of talk about those just now—some very select people have them, and perhaps they're what kept him back and made him so hopelessly low in his tastes, but I just know he'd never go to a doctor about them. For heaven's sake, use what influence you have to get him back here and to take his rightful place in society."

I had a profound conviction that he would never take his rightful place in society, be it the fault of adenoids or whatever; that low passion of his for being pally with all sorts made it seem that his sense of values must have been at fault from birth, and yet I could not bring myself to abandon him utterly, for, as I have intimated, something in the fellow's nature appealed to me. I accordingly