told by a long way, but a garbled
version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a
doting father who never consented to it--and such a hash-up and
hocus-pocus as would have made a pig laugh.

Whether, however, the public really took it all, or whether it resented
the manner of the play, is not for me to say.

Sentiment is, after all, a very fine thing, as I told Betsy Chambers
the night I gave her the anchor brooch and asked her to wear it for
auld lang syne, to say nothing of the good time we had when I took her
to Maidenhead in old Moss's car and pretended I was broken down at
Reading with a dot-and-go-one accumulator. Of course, Moss weighed in
with an interview. I wonder the sight of his ugly old mug didn't
shrivel the paper it was printed on.

Anyway me and Betsy--but that's another story, and so, perhaps, I had
better conclude.

VI

THE COUNTESS

To begin with, I suppose, it would be as well to tell you her name, but
I only saw it once in the address-book at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and
then I couldn't have written it down for myself--no, not if a man had
offered me five of the best for doing so.

You see, she gave it out that she came from foreign parts, and her
husband, when she remembered that she'd got one, was supposed to be a
Hungarian grandee with a name fit to crack walnuts, and a moustache
like an antelope's horns set over a firegrate to speak of her
ancestors. Had I been offered two guesses, I would have said that she
came from New York City and that her name was Mary. But who am I to
contradict a pretty woman in trouble, and what was the matter with
Maria Louise Theresa, and all the rest of it, as she set it down in the
visitors' book at the hotel?

I'd been over to Paris on a job with a big French car, and worked there
a little while for James D. Higgs, the American tin-plate maker, who
was making things shine at the Ritz Hotel, and had a Panhard almost big
enough to take the chorus to Armenonville--which he did by sections,
showing neither fear nor favour, and being wonderful domesticated in
his tastes.

When James was overtaken by the domestic emotions, and thought he would
return to Pittsburg to his sorrowing wife and children, he handed me
over to the Countess, saying that she was a particular friend of his,
and that if her ancestors didn't sail with the Conqueror it was
probably because they had an appointment at the Moulin Rouge and were
too gentlemanly