Percival Benson Woodhouse (and the Lord forgive me if they
ever call him Percy for short!) and that his aunt is the Countess of
D---- and that he knows a number of people you and Lady Agatha have
often spoken of. He's got a Japanese servant called Kino, or perhaps
it's spelt Keeno, I don't know which, who's housekeeper, laundress,
_valet_, gardener, groom and _chef_, all in one,--so, at least Percival
Benson confessed to me. He also confessed that he'd bought the
Titchborne Ranch, from photographs, from "one of those land chaps" in
London. He wanted to rough it a bit, and they told him there would be
jolly good game shooting. So he even brought along an elephant-gun, which
his cousin had used in India. The photographs which the "land chap" had
showed him turned out to be pictures of the Selkirks. And, taking it all
in all, he fancied that he'd been jolly well bunked. But Percival seemed
to accept it with the stoicism of the well-born Britisher. He'd have a
try at the place, although there was no game.

"But there _is_ game," I told him, "slathers of it, oodles of it!"

He mildly inquired where and what? I told him: Wild duck,
prairie-chicken, wild geese, jack-rabbits, now and then a fox, and loads
of coyotes. He explained, then, that he meant big game--and how grandly
those two words, "big game," do roll off the English tongue! He has a
sister in the Bahamas, who may join him next summer if he should decide
to stick it out. He considered that it would be a bit rough for a girl,
during the winter season up here.

Yet before I go any further I must describe Percival Benson Woodhouse to
you, for he's not only "our sort," but a type as well.

In the first place, he's a Magdalen College man, the sort we've seen
going up and down the High many and many a time. He's rather gaunt and
rather tall, and he stoops a little. "At home" they call it the "Oxford
stoop," if I'm not greatly mistaken. His hands are thin and long and
bony. His eyes are nice, and he looks very good form. I mean he's the
sort of man you'd never take for the "outsider" or "rotter." He's the
sort who seem to have the royal privilege of doing even doubtfully
polite things and yet doing them in such a way as to make them seem
quite proper. I don't know whether I make that clear or not, but one
thing is clear, and this is that our Percival Benson is an aristocrat.
You see it in his over-sensitive, over-refined, almost womanishly
delicate face, with those ideal