Hardly repressing a shudder, I bowed, whereupon he advanced solemnly to me and put out his hand. To cover the embarrassing situation tactfully I extended my own, and we actually shook hands, although the clasp was limply quite formal. “How do you do, Mr. Ruggles?” he began. I bowed again, but speech failed me. “She sent me over to get you,” he went on. He uttered the word “She” with such profound awe that I knew he could mean none other than Mrs. Effie. It was most extraordinary, but I dare say only what was to have been expected from persons of this sort. In any good-class club or among gentlemen at large it is customary to allow one at least twenty-four hours for the payment of one’s gambling debts. Yet there I was being collected by the winner at so early an hour as half-after seven. If I had been a five-pound note instead of myself, I fancy it would have been quite the same. These Americans would most indecently have sent for their winnings before the Honourable George had awakened. One would have thought they had expected him to refuse payment of me after losing me the night before. How little they seemed to realize that we were both intending to be dead sportsmen. “Very good, sir,” I said, “but I trust I may be allowed to brew the Honourable George his tea before leaving? I’d hardly like to trust to him alone with it, sir.” “Yes, sir,” he said, so respectfully that it gave me an odd feeling. “Take your time, Mr. Ruggles. I don’t know as I am in any hurry on my own account. It’s only account of Her.” I trust it will be remembered that in reporting this person’s speeches I am making an earnest effort to set them down word for word in all their terrific peculiarities. I mean to say, I would not be held accountable for his phrasing, and if I corrected his speech, as of course the tendency is, our identities might become confused. I hope this will be understood when I report him as saying things in ways one doesn’t word them. I mean to say that it should not be thought that I would say them in this way if it chanced that I were saying the same things in my proper person. I fancy this should now be plain. “Very well, sir,” I said. “If it was me,” he went on, “I wouldn’t want you a little bit. But it’s Her. She’s got her mind made up to do the right thing and have us all be somebody, and when she makes her mind up----” He hesitated and studied the ceiling for some seconds. “Believe me,” he continued, “Mrs. Effie is some wildcat!” “Yes, sir--some wildcat,” I repeated. “Believe _me_, Bill,” he said again, quaintly addressing me by a name not my own--“believe me, she’d fight a rattlesnake and give it the first two bites.”