A brief and still snarky note had
apprised me of his intention to come out to North America, whereupon I
had all but forgotten him, until a telegram from Chicago or one of
those places had warned me of his imminence. This I displayed to
Cousin Egbert, who, much pleased with himself, declared that the
Honourable George should be taken to the Floud home directly upon his
arrival.
"I meant to rope him in there on the start," he confided to me, "but I
let on I wasn't decided yet, just to keep 'em stirred up. Mrs. Effie
she butters me up with soft words every day of my life, and that
Jackson lad has offered me about ten thousand of them vegetable
cigarettes, but I'll have to throw him down. He's the human flivver.
Put him in a car of dressed beef and he'd freeze it between here and
Spokane. Yes, sir; you could cut his ear off and it wouldn't bleed. I
ain't going to run the Judge against no such proposition like that."
Of course the poor chap was speaking his own backwoods metaphor, as I
am quite sure he would have been incapable of mutilating
Belknap-Jackson, or even of imprisoning him in a goods van of beef. I
mean to say, it was merely his way of speaking and was not to be taken
at all literally.
As a result of his ensuing call upon the pressman, the sheet of the
following morning contained word of the Honourable George's coming,
the facts being not garbled more than was usual with this chap.
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