The occurrence in
the studio, however, was entirely natural. I wished to please my
friends and made no demur whatever when asked to don the things--a
trouserish affair, of sheep's wool, which they called "chapps," a
flannel shirt of blue (they knotted a scarlet handkerchief around my
neck), and a wide-brimmed white hat with four indentations in the
crown, such as one may see worn in the cinema dramas by cow-persons
and other western-coast desperadoes. When they had strapped around my
waist a large pistol in a leather jacket, I considered the effect
picturesque in the extreme, and my friends were loud in their approval
of it.
I repeat, it was an occasion when it would have been boorish in me to
refuse to meet them halfway. I even told them an excellent wheeze I
had long known, which I thought they might not, have heard. It runs:
"Why is Charing Cross? Because the Strand runs into it." I mean to
say, this is comic providing one enters wholly into the spirit of it,
as there is required a certain nimbleness of mind to get the point, as
one might say. In the present instance some needed element was
lacking, for they actually drew aloof from me and conversed in low
tones among themselves, pointedly ignoring me. I repeated the thing to
make sure they should see it, whereat I heard Cousin Egbert say.
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