Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/374

360 But in truth his lordship had insisted that quite almost every one should come and stop on with him.

"Of course, course, what, what! Jolly party, no end of fun. Week-end, that sort of thing. Know she'll like her old friends best. Wouldn't be keen for the creature if she'd not. Have'em all, have 'em all. Capital, by Jove!"

To be sure it was a manner of speaking, born of the expansive good feeling of the moment. Yet I believe Cousin Egbert was the only invited one to decline. He did so with evident distress at having to refuse.

"I like your little woman a whole lot," he observed to his lordship, "but Europe is too kind of uncomfortable for me; keeps me upset all the time, what with all the foreigners and one thing and another. But, listen here, Cap! You pack the little woman back once in a while. Just to give us a flash at her. We'll give you both a good time."

"What ho!" returned his lordship. "Of course, course! Fancy we'd like it vastly, what, what!"

"Yes, sir, I fancy you would, too," and rather startlingly Cousin Egbert seized her ladyship and kissed her heartily. Whereupon her ladyship kissed the fellow in return.

"Yes, sir, I dare say I fancy you would," he called back a bit nervously as he left.

Belknap-Jackson drove the party to the station, feeling, I am sure, that he scored over Mrs. Effie, though he was obliged to include the Mixer, from whom her ladyship bluntly refused to be separated. I inferred that she must have found the time and seclusion in which to weep a bit on the Mixer's shoulder. The waist of the latter's purple satin gown was quite spotty at the height of her ladyship's eyes.