"Worse than that," grinned Ardmore with rising humor, "I had to chip in to pay for it! And the plumbing isn't yet what it ought to be. The last time I was over there I caught cold and nearly died of pneumonia. I make it a rule now never to visit dukes. You never know what you'll strike when you stay in those ancestral castles, even when they've been restored with some silly American girl's grandfather's money. Those places are all full of drafts and malaria and ghosts, and they make you drink tea in the afternoon, which is worse than being haunted." "I suppose we might invite his Grace to inspect our militia," persisted Jerry. "It would sound well in the papers to have a real duke inspect the North Carolina troops." "It would sound better than he would look doing it, I can tell you that. Old Wellington may have been all right, but these new dukes were never made for horseback." "He might appear in a carriage, wearing his orders and ride the lines that way, with all the troops presenting arms." "Or you might pin his debts on him and mount him on a goat on the rifle-range and let the sharp-shooters pepper away at him! Please let us not talk about Ballywinkle any more; the thought of him gives me that sinking feeling." He had opened an atlas and was poring over it with a magnifying glass. "It's positively funny," he murmured, laughing a little to himself, "but I know something about this country over here. Here's Ardsley, in the far corner of Dilwell County, and here's Kildare." "Yes; I understand maps. Dilwell is green, and there's the state line, and that ugly watery sort of yellow is Mingo County, South Carolina, and Turner Court House is the county seat of it. Those little black marks are hills on the border, and it's right there that these Appleweight people live, and dance on the state line as though it were a skipping-rope." "That's exactly it. Now what we want to do is to arrest Appleweight and put him in jail in South Carolina, which relieves the governor of North Carolina, your honored father, of all embarrassment." She snatched the paper-cutter and took possession of the map for a moment, then pointed, with a happy little laugh. "Why, that will be only too easy. You see there's Azbell County, where the militia is encamped, just three counties away from Dilwell, and if we needed the soldiers it wouldn't hurt the troops to march that far, would it?" "Hurt them, nothing!" exclaimed Ardmore. "It will be good for them. You have to give orders to the adjutant-general, and, being engaged to him, he would be afraid not to obey your orders, even if you told him to go in balloons." "Well, of course, I'd send him an official order; and if he was disobedient I could break our engagement. When I broke my engagement with Arthur Treadmeasure, it was only because he was five minutes late coming to take me to a dance." "You were perfectly right, Miss Dangerfield. No gentleman would keep you waiting."