Cousin Egbert had removed his coat, collar, and cravat, and
his sleeves were rolled to his elbows like a navvy's. Both smoked the
brown paper cigarettes.
"You see?" murmured Mr. Belknap-Jackson as we looked in upon them.
"Quite so, sir," I said discreetly.
The Mixer regarded her son-in-law with some annoyance, I thought.
"Run off to bed, Jackson!" she directed. "We're busy. I'm putting a
nick in Sour-dough's bank roll."
Our host turned away with a contemptuous shrug that I dare say might
have offended her had she observed it, but she was now speaking to
Cousin Egbert, who had stared at us brazenly.
"Ring that bell for the coon, Sour-dough. I'll split a bottle of
Scotch with you."
It queerly occurred to me that she made this monstrous suggestion in a
spirit of bravado to annoy Mr. Belknap-Jackson.
CHAPTER SIX
There are times when all Nature seems to smile, yet when to the
sensitive mind it will be faintly brought that the possibilities are
quite tremendously otherwise if one will consider them pro and con. I
mean to say, one often suspects things may happen when it doesn't look
so.
The succeeding three days passed with so ordered a calm that little
would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near
their placid surface.
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