waved his hand and snapped his
fingers and they herded into the servants' wing, from which in a
twinkling they emerged ready to take up their old duties. They were not
a liveried lot, but they were swift and capable.

Calmly taking Lord Deppingham and his following into his confidence, he
said, in reply to their indignant remonstrances, later on in the day:

"I know that an American man-o'-war hasn't any right to fire upon
British possessions, but you just keep quiet and let well enough alone.
These fellows believe that the Americans can shoot straighter and with
less pity than any other set of people on earth. If they ever find out
the truth, we won't be able to control 'em a minute. It won't hurt you
to let 'em believe that we can blow the Island off the map in half a
day, and they won't believe you if you tell 'em anything to the
contrary. They just simply _know_ that I can send wireless messages and
that a cruiser would be out there to-morrow if necessary, pegging away
at these green hills with cannon balls so big that there wouldn't be
anything left but the horizon in an hour or two. You let me do the
talking. I've got 'em bluffed and I'll keep 'em that way. Look at that!
See those fellows getting ready to wash the front windows? They don't
need it, I'll confess, but it makes conversation in the servants' hall."

Over in the gorgeous west wing, Lord Deppingham later on tried to
convince his sulky little wife that the Americans were an amazing lot,
after all. Bromley tapped at the door.

"Tea is served in the hanging garden, my lady," she announced. Her
mistress looked up in surprise, red-eyed and a bit dishevelled.

"The--the what?"

"It's a very pretty place just outside the rooms of the American lady
and gentleman, my lady. It's on the shady side and quite under the shelf
of the mountain. There's a very cool breeze all the time, they say, from
the caverns."

Deppingham glanced at the sun-baked window ledges of their own rooms and
swore softly.

"Ask some one to bring the tea things in here, Bromley," she said
sternly, her piquant face as hard and set as it could possibly
be--which, as a matter of fact, was not noticeably adamantine. "Besides,
I want to give some orders. We must have system here, not Americanisms."

"Very well, my lady."

After she had retired Deppingham was so unwise as to run his finger
around the inside of his collar and utter the lamentation:

"By Jove, Aggie, it _is_ hot in thes