I perceived him to be a person of profound and interesting views, and it was with regret I left him to bully Cousin Egbert into evening dress. It is undoubtedly true that he will never wear this except it have the look of having been forced upon him by several persons of superior physical strength. The evening passed in a refined manner with cards and music, the latter being emitted from a phonograph which I was asked to attend to and upon which I reproduced many of their quaint North American folksongs, such as “Everybody Is Doing It,” which has a rare native rhythm. At ten o’clock, it being noticed by the three playing dummy bridge that Cousin Egbert and the Mixer were absent, I accompanied our host in search of them. In Cousin Egbert’s hut we found them, seated at a bare table, playing at cards--a game called seven-upwards, I learned. Cousin Egbert had removed his coat, collar, and cravat, and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows like a navvy’s. Both smoked the brown paper cigarettes. “You see?” murmured Mr. Belknap-Jackson as we looked in upon them. “Quite so, sir,” I said discreetly. The Mixer regarded her son-in-law with some annoyance, I thought. “Run off to bed, Jackson!” she directed. “We’re busy. I’m putting a nick in Sour-dough’s bank roll.” Our host turned away with a contemptuous shrug that I dare say might have offended her had she observed it, but she was now speaking to Cousin Egbert, who had stared at us brazenly. “Ring that bell for the coon, Sour-dough. I’ll split a bottle of Scotch with you.” It queerly occurred to me that she made this monstrous suggestion in a spirit of bravado to annoy Mr. Belknap-Jackson. CHAPTER SIX There are times when all Nature seems to smile, yet when to the sensitive mind it will be faintly brought that the possibilities are quite tremendously otherwise if one will consider them pro and con. I mean to say, one often suspects things may happen when it doesn’t look so. The succeeding three days passed with so ordered a calm that little would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near their placid surface. Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a shilling a game, or “two bits,” as it is known in the American monetary system. And our host continued his recreation.