Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/232

218 The evident conviction of his tone alarmed his hearers, who regarded each other with pained speculation.

"Right where I tell him to stay and no place else," insisted Cousin Egbert, sensing the impression he had made.

"But this is too monstrous!" said Mr. Jackson, regarding me imploringly.

"The Honourable George," I admitted, "has been known to do unexpected things, and there have been times when he was not as sensitive as I could wish to the demands of his caste"

"Bill is stalling—he knows darned well the Judge is a mixer," broke in Cousin Egbert, somewhat to my embarrassment, nor did any reply occur to me. There was a moment's awkward silence during which I became sensitive to a radical change in the attitude which these people bore to Cousin Egbert. They shot him looks of furtive but unmistakable respect, and Mrs. Effie remarked almost with tenderness: "We must admit that Cousin Egbert has a certain way with him."

"I dare say Floud and I can adjust the matter satisfactorily to all," remarked Belknap-Jackson, and with a jaunty affection of good-fellowship, he opened his cigarette case to Cousin Egbert.

"I ain't made up my mind yet where I'll have him stay," announced the latter, too evidently feeling his newly acquired importance. "I may have him stay one place, then again I may have him stay another. I can't decide things like that off-hand."

And here the matter was preposterously left, the aspirants for this social honour patiently bending their knees to the erstwhile despised Cousin Egbert, and the