Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/43

Rh as her glance rested upon him I was to know as Cousin Egbert. I saw her capable mouth set in a straight line of determination.

"You did your very worst, didn't you?" she began. "But sit down and eat your breakfast. He'll soon change that." She turned to me. "Now, Ruggles, I hope you understand the situation, and I'm sure I can trust you to take no nonsense from him. You see plainly what you've got to do. I let him dress to suit himself this morning, so that you could know the worst at once. Take a good look at him—shoes, coat, hat—that dreadful cravat!"

"I call this a right pretty necktie," mumbled her victim over a crust of toast. She had poured coffee for him.

"You hear that?" she asked me. I bowed sympathetically.

"What does he look like?" she insisted. "Just tell him for his own good, please."

But this I could not do. True enough, during our short ride he had been reminding me of one of a pair of cross-talk comedians I had once seen in a music-hall. This, of course, was not a thing one could say.

"I dare say, Madam, he could be smartened up a bit. If I might take him to some good-class shop"

"And burn the things he's got on" she broke in.

"Not this here necktie," interrupted Cousin Egbert rather stubbornly. "It was give to me by Jeff Tuttle's littlest girl last Christmas; and this here Prince Albert coat—what's the matter of it, I'd like to know? It come right from the One Price Clothing Store at Red Gap, and it's plenty good to go to funerals in"

"And then to a barber-shop with him," went on Mrs.