piration. Here at last
were people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the
mayor helped him into the automobile, and those students who lived
in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture
machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But
inwardly he was ill at ease.

Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost
on the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!

Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki,
by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous
liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater
gathered outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling
and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only
frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor
Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
Stillwater shouted, "Speech," in sudden panic he reached out his hand
quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.

"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader. "Now, then, 'See
the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the bandmaster. "Attention! Present arms!"
yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the
rear of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to
the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.

Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in St