To my consternation the driver chap halted, and before I could remonstrate the Honourable George had mounted to the box beside him. Thankful I was we had left the main street, though in the residence avenue where the change was made we attracted far more attention than was desirable. “Didn’t I tell you he was some mixer?” demanded Cousin Egbert of me, but I was too sickened to make any suitable response. The Honourable George’s possession of a single spat was now flaunted, as it were, in the face of Red Gap’s best families. “How foreign it all is!” he repeated, turning back to us, yet with only his side-glance for me. “But the American Johnny in London had a much smarter coach than this, and better animals, too. You’re not up to his class yet, old thing!” “That dish-faced pinto on the off side,” remarked the driver, “can outrun anything in this town for fun, money, or marbles.” “Marbles!” called the Honourable George to us; “why marbles? Silly things! It’s all bally strange! And why do your villagers stare so?” “Some little mixer, all right, all right,” murmured Cousin Egbert in a sort of ecstasy, as we drew up at the Floud home. “And yet one of them guys back there called him a typical Britisher. You bet I shut him up quick--saying a thing like that about a plumb stranger. I’d ‘a’ mixed it with him right there except I thought it was better to have things nice and not start something the minute the Judge got here.” With all possible speed I hurried the party indoors, for already faces were appearing at the windows of neighbouring houses. Mrs. Effie, who met us, allowed her glare at Cousin Egbert, I fancy, to affect the cordiality of her greeting to the Honourable George; at least she seemed to be quite as dazed as he, and there was a moment of constraint before he went on up to the room that had been prepared for him. Once safely within the room I contrived a moment alone with him and removed his single spat, not too gently, I fear, for the nervous strain since his arrival had told upon me. “You have reason to be thankful,” I said, “that Belknap-Jackson was not present to witness this.” “They cost seven and six,” he muttered, regarding the one spat wistfully. “But why Belknap-Jackson?” “Mr. C. Belknap-Jackson of Boston and Red Gap,” I returned sternly. “He does himself perfectly. To think he might have seen you in this rowdyish state!” And I hastened to seek a presentable lounge-suit from his bags. “Everything is so strange,” he muttered again, quite helplessly. “And why the mural decoration at the edge of the settlement? Why keep one’s eye upon it? Why should they do such things? I say, it’s all quite monstrous, you know.”