“You did your very worst, didn’t you?” she began. “But sit down and eat your breakfast. He’ll soon change _that_.” She turned to me. “Now, Ruggles, I hope you understand the situation, and I’m sure I can trust you to take no nonsense from him. You see plainly what you’ve got to do. I let him dress to suit himself this morning, so that you could know the worst at once. Take a good look at him--shoes, coat, hat--that dreadful cravat!” “I call this a right pretty necktie,” mumbled her victim over a crust of toast. She had poured coffee for him. “You hear that?” she asked me. I bowed sympathetically. “What does he look like?” she insisted. “Just tell him for his own good, please.” But this I could not do. True enough, during our short ride he had been reminding me of one of a pair of cross-talk comedians I had once seen in a music-hall. This, of course, was not a thing one could say. “I dare say, Madam, he could be smartened up a bit. If I might take him to some good-class shop----” “And burn the things he’s got on----” she broke in. “Not this here necktie,” interrupted Cousin Egbert rather stubbornly. “It was give to me by Jeff Tuttle’s littlest girl last Christmas; and this here Prince Albert coat--what’s the matter of it, I’d like to know? It come right from the One Price Clothing Store at Red Gap, and it’s plenty good to go to funerals in----” “And then to a barber-shop with him,” went on Mrs. Effie, who had paid no heed to his outburst. “Get him done right for once.” Her relative continued to nibble nervously at a bit of toast. “I’ve done something with him myself,” she said, watching him narrowly. “At first he insisted on having the whole bill-of-fare for breakfast, but I put my foot down, and now he’s satisfied with the continental breakfast. That goes to show he has something in him, if we can only bring it out.” “Something in him, indeed, yes, Madam!” I assented, and Cousin Egbert, turning to me, winked heavily. “I want him to look like some one,” she resumed, “and I think you’re the man can make him if you’re firm with him; but you’ll have to be firm, because he’s full of tricks. And if he starts any rough stuff, just come to me.” “Quite so, Madam,” I said, but I felt I was blushing with shame at hearing one of my own sex so slanged by a woman. That sort of thing would never do with us. And yet there was something about this woman--something weirdly authoritative. She showed rather well in the morning light, her gray eyes crackling as she talked. She was wearing a most elaborate peignoir, and of course she should not have worn the diamonds; it seemed almost too much like the morning hour of a stage favourite; but still one felt that when she talked one would do well to listen. Hereupon Cousin Egbert startled me once more. “Won’t you set up and have something with us, Mr. Ruggles?” he asked me.