I was conscious of more than a little irritation at his manner of speaking of Cousin Egbert, but this in my new character I could hardly betray. When he set me down at the Floud house, “Thanks for the breeze-out,” I said; then, with an easy wave of the hand and in firm tones, “Good day, Jackson! See you again, old chap!” I had nerved myself to it as to an icy tub and was rewarded by a glow such as had suffused me that morning in Paris after the shameful proceedings with Cousin Egbert and the Indian Tuttle. I mean to say, I felt again that wonderful thrill of equality--quite as if my superiors were not all about me. Inside the house Mrs. Effie addressed the last of a heap of invitations for an early reception--“To meet Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles,” they read. CHAPTER NINE Of the following fortnight I find it difficult to write coherently. I found myself in a steady whirl of receptions, luncheons, dinners, teas, and assemblies of rather a pretentious character, at the greater number of which I was obliged to appear as the guest of honour. It began with the reception of Mrs. Floud, at which I may be said to have made my first formal bow to the smarter element of Red Gap, followed by the dinner of the Mrs. Ballard, with whom I had formed acquaintance on that first memorable evening. I was during this time like a babe at blind play with a set of chess men, not knowing king from pawn nor one rule of the game. Senator Floud--who was but a member of their provincial assembly, I discovered--sought an early opportunity to felicitate me on my changed estate, though he seemed not a little amused by it. “Good work!” he said. “You know I was afraid our having an English valet would put me in bad with the voters this fall. They’re already saying I wear silk stockings since I’ve been abroad. My wife did buy me six pair, but I’ve never worn any. Shows how people talk, though. And even now they’ll probably say I’m making up to the British army. But it’s better than having a valet in the house. The plain people would never stand my having a valet and I know it.” I thought this most remarkable, that his constituency should resent his having proper house service. American politics were, then, more debased than even we of England had dreamed. “Good work!” he said again. “And say, take out your papers--become one of us. Be a citizen. Nothing better than an American citizen on God’s green earth. Read the Declaration of Independence. Here----” From a bookcase at his hand he reached me a volume. “Read and reflect, my man! Become a citizen of a country where true worth has always its chance and one may hope to climb to any heights whatsoever.” Quite like an advertisement he talked, but I read their so-called Declaration, finding it snarky in the extreme and with no end of silly rot about equality. In no way at all did it solve the problems by which I had been so suddenly confronted.