The old gentleman gasped, twiddled the string of his glasses in his fingers, and leant his head sidewise toward his daughter. “Yes, but what _is_ it we’re going to do?” he inquired in a nervous whisper. “Do?” cried Mosscrop, who had caught her glance in his own, and convicted it of latent merriment, “Do? Why we’re going to laugh at a harmless pleasantry happily ended, and pass in to luncheon.” “Yes, papa,” said Adele, upon consideration, and with a dawning smile upon her lips, “I think that _is_ what we’re going to do.” When they found themselves standing about the table in the private room, overlooking through open French windows the delightful sunlit garden from which they had come, Mosscrop seized the moment of hesitation about seats to hold up his hand. Though he had been bereft of his borrowed dignities, the air of natural command sat easily upon him. “I have to ask you for a minute or two of delay,” he said. “It will explain itself.” He wrote something on a card as he spoke, and gave it to the waiter with a closely-guarded whisper of injunction. As the servant left the room, David turned to the others with a radiant face. “Mr. Skinner,” he began, “and my younger friends, there is a toast which in England is always drunk standing. It occurs to me to propose it to you, on this single occasion, before we have taken our seats at all. As has been remarked with characteristic perspicacity, the circumstances which we find ourselves called upon to confront are extraordinary in character, and altogether unprecedented. Through the courtesy of my friends, I have for a brief period had devolved upon me the responsibility of behaving, at stated intervals, as a member of the Scotch peerage should behave. I view my deportment throughout this ordeal, in retrospect, with a considerable degree of satisfaction. I have spared no pains to realise my conception of the part. The essential thing about a successful peerage, I take it, is that it should be invested, for ordinary eyes, with a glamour of unreality. A Baron should be perceptibly romantic. A Viscount, if he respects his station should quite envelope himself in the mists of the improbable. As for an Earl, he should live frankly in fairyland. My imagination does not run to Marquises and Dukes, but I think I may say I have grasped the ideal of an Earl.” “The true ideal of an Earl,” interposed Drumpipes, with inspiration, “is never to let victuals get cold.”