Pettengill, for example, and Cousin Egbert,
who deliberately chose not to matter, and mingled as freely with the
Bohemian set as they did with the county families. Thus one could
never be quite certain whom one was meeting. There was the Tuttle
person. I had learned from Mrs. Effie in Paris that he was an Indian
(accounting for much that was startling in his behaviour there) yet
despite his being an aborigine I now learned that his was one of the
county families and he and his white American wife were guests at that
first dinner. Throughout the meal both Cousin Egbert and he winked
atrociously at me whenever they could catch my eye.
There was, again, an English person calling himself Hobbs, a baker, to
whom Cousin Egbert presented me, full of delight at the idea that as
compatriots we were bound to be congenial. Yet it needed only a glance
and a moment's listening to the fellow's execrable cockney dialect to
perceive that he was distinctly low-class, and I was immensely
relieved, upon inquiry, to learn that he affiliated only with the
Bohemian set. I felt a marked antagonism between us at that first
meeting; the fellow eyed me with frank suspicion and displayed a taste
for low chaffing which I felt bound to rebuke. He it was, I may now
disclose, who later began a fashion of referring to me as "Lord Algy,"
which I found in the worst possible taste.
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