"Not such a small grocer's as you might think. I could give you a banker's reference which perhaps would startle you. It isn't always them, you know, who carry things off with the biggest air who are the biggest." "But," I cried, "are you aware, sir, that the person whom you assert to be your wife, has, here in Beachington, laid claim to Royal rank?" The little man's air of modest pride disappeared with even comic suddenness. "Not to Royal rank? Not quite to Royal rank, I hope?" "But I say yes--I say yes. She told me with her own lips that she was a near relation to the Russian Czar." Mr Dowsett began again to wring his hands. "Oh, Eliza, what have you done?" "If the person you refer to as 'Eliza'--great powers, what a name!--is the person who calls herself the Princess Margaretta, then she has been guilty of the most impudent fraud of which I ever heard, and proved herself to be a swindler of the purest water." Mr Dowsett stared, or, rather, glared at me. He drew himself to his full height--five foot three inches. He turned pale with rage; he actually shook his fist in my face. "Don't you call my wife a swindler, you--you old villain!" I was astounded. "May I ask, Mr Dowsett, what language you would apply to a person who, being a grocer's wife, calls herself a widow, in possession of a large fortune, a Princess in her own right, and a near relative of the reigning Czar?" Mr Dowsett looked at me, as if he were at a loss for words. Then, to my surprise and my disgust, he began to cry. Mr Dowsett appeared to be a man of variable moods. "You sha'n't call her a swindler, you sha'n't! She's no more a swindler than you are. It's all them--them dratted books." "Dratted books, Mr Dowsett? What do you mean?" "It's them penny novelettes and the stories in the fashion papers, and that stuff. She gets reading about things, and then she thinks she's the things she reads about. I'll tell you what she said to me not very long ago. 'Jimmy,' she said--I'm Jimmy--'let's pretend that I'm a duchess. I've been reading about such a beautiful duchess. Let's pretend I'm her.' So we did, just her and me. I called her 'Your Grace,' and all. We kept it up for nearly a month. Then she said, 'Jimmy, I'm tired of being a duchess. I've been reading such a lovely story about a lone, lorn orphan. Let's pretend I'm a lone, lorn orphan, whom you picked up out of the streets, for a change.' So we pretended that she was a lone, lorn orphan who'd gone through enough to make your hair go grey. But, there! I don't know what we haven't pretended she was." That any man could be capable of such childish imbecility seemed to me almost incredible. But then man's capacity of imbecility is incredible. Consider how a man of my standing had been induced to receive a grocer's wife as a Royal Princess! "May I ask, Mr Dowsett, how you came to allow your wife to come to Beachington unaccompanied by her husband?"