Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/272



AUNCHED now upon a business venture that would require my unremitting attention if it were to prosper, it may be imagined that I had little leisure for the social vagaries of the Honourable George, shocking as these might be to one's finer tastes. And yet on the following morning I found time to tell him what. To put it quite bluntly, I gave him beans for his loose behaviour the previous evening, in publicly ogling and meeting as an equal one whom one didn't know.

To my amazement, instead of being heartily ashamed of his licentiousness, I found him recalcitrant. Stubborn as a mule he was and with a low animal cunning that I had never given him credit for. "Demosthenes was the son of a cutler," said he, "and Napoleon worked on a canal-boat, what? Didn't you say so yourself, you juggins, what? Fancy there being upper and lower classes among natives! What rot! And I like North America. I don't mind telling you straight I'm going to take it up."

Horrified by these reckless words, I could only say "Noblesse oblige," meaning to convey that whatever the North Americans did, the next Earl of Brinstead must not meet persons one doesn't know, whereat he rejoined tartly that I was "to stow that piffle!"

Being now quite alarmed, I took the further time to call 258