ister Olpherts an' me--ain't goin' by that early morning
train to-morrow--but the other one--on the other line--whatever
they call it.'

'The nine twenty-seven, sir. Yes, sir. Early breakfast will be at
half-past eight and the car will be at the door at nine.'

'Peters!' an imperious young voice called. 'What's the matteh with Lord
Marshalton's Ordeh of the Gyartah? We cyan't find it anyweah.'

'Well, miss, I _have_ heard that that Order is usually returned to His
Majesty on the death of the holder. Yes, miss.' Then in a whisper to a
footman, 'More butter for the pop-corn in King Charles's Corner.' He
stopped behind my chair. 'Your room is Number Eleven, sir. May I trouble
you for your keys?'

He left the room with a six-year-old maiden called Alice who had
announced she would not go to bed ''less Peter, Peter, Punkin-eater
takes me--so there!'

He very kindly looked in on me for a moment as I was dressing for
dinner. 'Not at all, sir,' he replied to some compliment I paid him. 'I
valeted the late Lord Marshalton for fifteen years. He was very abrupt
in his movements, sir. As a rule I never received more than an hour's
notice of a journey. We used to go to Syria frequently. I have been
twice to Babylon. Mr. and Mrs. Zigler's requirements are, comparatively
speaking, few.'

'But the guests?'

'Very little out of the ordinary as soon as one knows their ordinaries.
Extremely simple, if I may say so, sir.'

I had the privilege of taking Mrs. Burton in to dinner, and was rewarded
with an entirely new, and to me rather shocking view, of Abraham
Lincoln, who, she said, had wasted the heritage of his land by blood and
fire, and had surrendered the remnant to aliens. 'My brother, suh,' she
said, 'fell at Gettysburg in order that Armenians should colonise New
England to-day. If I took any interest in any dam-Yankee outside of my
son-in-law Laughton yondah, I should say that my brother's death had
been amply avenged.'

The man at her right took up the challenge, and the war spread. Her eyes
twinkled over the flames she had lit.

'Don't these folk,' she said a little later, 'remind you of Arabs
picnicking under the Pyramids?'

'I've never seen the Pyramids,' I replied.

'Hm! I didn't know you were as English as all that.' And when I laughed,
'Are you?'

'Always. It saves trouble.'

'Now that's just what I find so significant among the English'--this was
Alice's mother, I think, with one elbow well forward among t