oilcloth, and the Governor dancing and foaming from his mouth. What an awfully old ass you have been, Jab, to go and blurt out everything in print—about your breach of promise case, and getting to know us, and—worst of all—being merely a bogey prince. Naturally, we don't care about being made to look fools. The dear old Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! And, as for the Governor, he's the sort of old retiring chap that has a downright loathing of publicity, when it makes him ridiculous. If he came across you just now, there's really no saying what he mightn't do. He's such a devilishly hot-tempered old boy!"
I did not comprehend the reasons for such exuberant anger, but, of course, young Howard insisted so urgently on physical dangers to myself if I delayed, that I hastened stealthily to my room by a backstair, and flinging my paraphernalia with incredible despatch into a portmanteau, was so fortunate as to convey it out of the house without attracting the invidious attention of my host and hostess, who were probably still occupied in foaming and rolling upon the carpet like angry waves of the sea.
Young Howard accompanied me to the station, though blaming me as the cause of his embroilment with his progenitors, who, it seems,
