Page:Rudyard Kipling - A diversity of creatures.djvu/293

Rh as I was dressing for dinner. 'Not at all, sir,' he replied to some compliment I paid him. 'I valeted the late Lord Marshalton for fifteen years. He was very abrupt in his movements, sir. As a rule I never received more than an hour's notice of a journey. We used to go to Syria frequently. I have been twice to Babylon. Mr. and Mrs. Zigler's requirements are, comparatively speaking, few.'

'But the guests?'

'Very little out of the ordinary as soon as one knows their ordinaries. Extremely simple, if I may say so, sir.'

I had the privilege of taking Mrs. Burton in to dinner, and was rewarded with an entirely new, and to me rather shocking, view of Abraham Lincoln, who, she said, had wasted the heritage of his land by blood and fire, and had surrendered the remnant to aliens. 'My brother, suh,' she said, 'fell at Gettysburg in order that Armenians should colonise New England to-day. If I took any interest in any dam-Yankee outside of my son-in-law Laughton yondah, I should say that my brother's death had been amply avenged.' The man at her right took up the challenge, and the war spread. Her eyes twinkled over the flames she had lit.

'Don't these folk,' she said a little later, 'remind you of Arabs picnicking under the Pyramids?'

'I've never seen the Pyramids,' I replied.

'Hm! I didn't know you were as English as all that.' And when I laughed, 'Are you?'