Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to
plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the
Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a shilling a
game, or "two bits," as it is known in the American monetary system.
And our host continued his recreation.
Each morning I turned him out in the smartest of fishing costumes and
each evening I assisted him to change. It is true I was now compelled
to observe at these times a certain lofty irritability in his
character, yet I more than half fancied this to be queerly assumed in
order to inform me that he was not unaccustomed to services such as I
rendered him. There was that about him. I mean to say, when he sharply
rebuked me for clumsiness or cried out "Stupid!" it had a perfunctory
languor, as if meant to show me he could address a servant in what he
believed to be the grand manner. In this, to be sure, he was so oddly
wrong that the pathos of it quite drowned what I might otherwise have
felt of resentment.
But I next observed that he was sharp in the same manner with the
hairy backwoods person who took him to fish each day, using words to
him which I, for one, would have employed, had I thought them merited,
only after the gravest hesitation.
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