To be sure it was a manner of speaking, born of the expansive good feeling of the moment. Yet I believe Cousin Egbert was the only invited one to decline. He did so with evident distress at having to refuse. “I like your little woman a whole lot,” he observed to his lordship, “but Europe is too kind of uncomfortable for me; keeps me upset all the time, what with all the foreigners and one thing and another. But, listen here, Cap! You pack the little woman back once in a while. Just to give us a flash at her. We’ll give you both a good time.” “What ho!” returned his lordship. “Of course, course! Fancy we’d like it vastly, what, what!” “Yes, sir, I fancy you would, too,” and rather startlingly Cousin Egbert seized her ladyship and kissed her heartily. Whereupon her ladyship kissed the fellow in return. “Yes, sir, I dare say I fancy you would,” he called back a bit nervously as he left. Belknap-Jackson drove the party to the station, feeling, I am sure, that he scored over Mrs. Effie, though he was obliged to include the Mixer, from whom her ladyship bluntly refused to be separated. I inferred that she must have found the time and seclusion in which to weep a bit on the Mixer’s shoulder. The waist of the latter’s purple satin gown was quite spotty at the height of her ladyship’s eyes. Belknap-Jackson on this occasion drove his car with the greatest solicitude, proceeding more slowly than I had ever known him do. As I attended to certain luggage details at the station he was regretting to his lordship that they had not had a longer time at the country club the day it was exhibited. “Look a bit after silly old George,” said his lordship to me at parting. “Chap’s dotty, I dare say. Talking about a plantation of apple trees now. For his old age--that sort of thing. Be something new in a fortnight, though. Like him, of course, course!” Her ladyship closed upon my hand with a remarkable vigour of grip. “We owe it all to you,” she said, again with dancing eyes. Then her eyes steadied queerly. “Maybe you won’t be sorry.” “Know I shan’t.” I fancy I rather growled it, stupidly feeling I was not rising to the occasion. “Knew his lordship wouldn’t rest till he had you where he wanted you. Glad he’s got you.” And curiously I felt a bit of a glad little squeeze in my throat for her. I groped for something light--something American. “You are some Countess,” I at last added in a silly way. “What, what!” said his lordship, but I had caught her eyes. They brimmed with understanding. With the going of that train all life seemed to go. I mean to say, things all at once became flat. I turned to the dull station. “Give you a lift, old chap,” said Belknap-Jackson. Again he was cordial. So firmly had I kept the reins of the whole affair in my grasp, such prestige he knew it would give me, he dared not broach his grievance. Some half-remembered American phrase of Cousin Egbert’s ran in my mind. I had put a buffalo on him!