How it had all come about, and why I should be addressed as "Colonel
Ruggles" and treated as a person of some importance in the community,
I dare say he has never comprehended to this day. As I had planned to
do, I later endeavoured to explain to him that in North America
persons were almost quite equal to one another--being born so--but at
this he told me not to be silly and continued to regard my rise as an
insoluble part of the strangeness he everywhere encountered, even
after I added that Demosthenes was the son of a cutler, that Cardinal
Wolsey's father had been a pork butcher, and that Garfield had worked
on a canal-boat. I found him quite hopeless. "Chaps go dotty talkin'
that piffle," was his comment.
At another time, I dare say, I should have been rather distressed over
this inability of the Honourable George to comprehend and adapt
himself to the peculiarities of American life as readily as I had
done, but just now I was quite too taken up with the details of my
opening to give it the deeper consideration it deserved. In fact,
there were moments when I confessed to myself that I did not care
tuppence about it, such was the strain upon my executive faculties.
When decorators and furnishers had done their work, when the choice
carpet was laid, when the kitchen and table equipments were completed
to the last detail, and when the lighting was artistically correct,
there was still the matter of service.
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