" Nor
would she allow either of us to assist her in this work. When she had
done, Cousin Egbert proceeded to mix hot toddies from the whiskey, and
we gathered about the table before the open fire.
"Now we'll have a nice home evening," said the Mixer, and to my great
embarrassment she began at once to speak to myself.
"A strong man like him has got no business becoming a social
butterfly," she remarked to Cousin Egbert.
"Oh, Bill's all right," insisted the latter, as he had done so many
times before.
"He's all right so far, but let him go on for a year or so and he
won't be a darned bit better than what Jackson is, mark my words. Just
a social butterfly, wearing funny clothes and attending afternoon
affairs."
"Well, I don't say you ain't right," said Cousin Egbert thoughtfully;
"that's one reason I got him out here where everything is nice. What
with speaking pieces like an actor, I was afraid they'd have him
making more kinds of a fool of himself than what Jackson does, him
being a foreigner, and his mind kind o' running on what clothes a man
had ought to wear."
Hereupon, so flushed was I with the good feeling of the occasion, I
told them straight that I had resolved to quit being Colonel Ruggles
of the British army and associate of the nobility; that I had
determined to forget all class distinctions and to become one of
themselves, plain, simple, and unpretentious.
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