Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/256

242 seemed to make him snarky again. I mean to say names with hyphen marks in 'em—I'd never heard the hyphen pronounced before, but everything is so strange. He said only the lowest classes did it as a form of coarse wit, and that he was wasting himself here. Wouldn't stay another day if it were not for family reasons. Queer sort of wheeze to say 'hyphen' in a chap's name as if it were a word, when it wasn't at all. The old girl, though—bellower she is—perfectly top-hole; familiar with cattle—all that sort of thing. Sent away the chap's sherry and had 'em bring whiskey and soda. The hyphen chap fidgeted a good bit—nervous sort, I take it. Looked through a score of magazines, I dare say, when he found we didn't notice him much; turned the leaves too fast to see anything, though; made noises and coughed that sort of thing. Fine old girl. Daughter, hyphen chap's wife, tried to talk, too, some rot about the season being well on here, and was there a good deal of society in London, and would I be free for dinner on the ninth?

"Silly chatter! old girl talked sense: cattle, mines, timber, blind factory, two-year olds, that kind of thing. Shall see her often. Not the hyphen chap, though; too much like one of those Bond Street milliner-chap managers."

Vague misgivings here beset me as to the value of the Honourable George to the North Side set. Nor could I feel at all reassured on the following day when Mrs. Effie held an afternoon reception in his honour. That he should be unaware of the event's importance was to be expected, for as yet I had been unable to get him to take the Red Gap social crisis seriously. At the hour when he should