Page:Rudyard Kipling - A diversity of creatures.djvu/297

Rh got a golf-links in the park here that they tell me is the finest inland course ever. I had to pay extra for that when I hired the ranche—last year. It was just before I signed the papers that our murder eventuated. My Lord Marshalton he asked me down for the week-end to fix up something or other—about Peters and the linen, I think 'twas. Mrs. Zigler took a holt of the proposition. She understood Peters from the word "go." There wasn't any house-party; only fifteen or twenty folk. A full house is thirty-two, Tommy tells me. 'Guess we must be near on that to-night. In the smoking-room here, my Lord Marshalton—Mankeltow that was—introduces me to this Walen man with the nose. He'd been in the War too, from start to finish. He knew all the columns and generals that I'd battled with in the days of my Zigler gun. We kinder fell into each other's arms an' let the harsh world go by for a while.

'Walen he introduces me to your Lord Lundie. He was a new proposition to me. If he hadn't been a lawyer he'd have made a lovely cattle-king. I thought I had played poker some. Another of my breaks. Ya-as! It cost me eleven hundred dollars besides what Tommy said when I retired. I have no fault to find with your hereditary aristocracy, or your judiciary, or your press.

'Sunday we all went to Church across the Park here. . . . Psha! Think o' your rememberin' my religion! I've become an Episcopalian since I married. Ya-as. . . . After lunch Walen did his crowned-heads-of-Europe stunt in the