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Updated: May 22, 2025
But the lights were up, and the curtain down it was a theatre between the acts; and presently the calculating voice of McCutcheon broke forth again, as he relapsed into his original attitude, coiling up his long limbs and nursing his cigar to a glow. "I can't get over that 'four jacks," he said. "To think I could have been funked into seeing Billy at fifty!" Blake laughed.
'Tisn't always in the serious reports you get the color of a fact, just as the gossip of a dinner-table is often more enlightening than a cabinet council." "Apropos?" "I was thinking of this Petersburg affair." "What? The everlasting Duma business?" McCutcheon drew in a long breath of smoke. Billy looked superior, as befitted a man who dealt in subtler matters than mere politics.
We called on Minister Brand Whitlock, whom we had not seen McCutcheon and I since the Sunday afternoon a month and a half before when we two left his official residence in a hired livery rig for a ride to Waterloo, which ride extended over a thousand miles, one way and another, and carried us into three of the warring countries.
The new governor was accompanied by two staff officers, one a Scotchman and the other an Irishman, and both of them with the clean, healthy look of the young British army officer. There would be a big reception at Mombasa, no doubt, with bands a-playing and fireworks popping, when the ship arrived with the new executive. Stephenson, Mr. and Mrs. Akeley and Mr. McCutcheon.
Spoken to, she replied in monosyllables in a carefully sweet tone. The young man's name was Jasper McCutcheon. It developed that Jasper owned an old racing-car which he kept in the Bailey garage, and he and Tish went out to look it over. They very politely asked us all to go along, but Bettina refusing, Aggie and I sat with her and looked at the moon.
"Say, Ned, ought we to wake our unsociable friend?" Blake cast one quick glance at the huddled form, then he answered, tersely: "Let him alone! He's not asleep and, anyway, he understands English." At which McCutcheon made a comprehending grimace, and the two left the carriage.
They say they will take no Americans, but to our minister they said they would make exception in favor of three, so I guess the three will be John McCutcheon, Palmer and myself. John and I, if anyone gets a pass, are sure. With the passes we had, Gerald and I started out in a yellow motor, covered with flags of the Allies, and saw a great deal.
He held out his paper, but Blake shook his head. "No! No, Billy, not for me. If it was some little Rumanian gypsy who had run away from her tribe I'd take her to my heart and welcome. But a Princess Davorska no!" At this point McCutcheon stretched out his long arm and took the paper from Billy's hand. "Let's have a squint!" he said. "Lover or no lover, she must be a bit wide awake."
It scorned to present to Winnebago the usual lyceum attractions Swiss bell ringers, negro glee clubs, and Family Fours. Instead, Schumann-Heink sang her lieder for them; McCutcheon talked and cartooned for them; Madame Bloomfield-Zeisler played. Winnebago was one of those wealthy little Mid-Western towns whose people appreciate the best and set out to acquire it for themselves.
The signs of illness were there in a notice tacked up on the wall, warning everybody to keep away when her attic should be still, until her friends could come from the charity office. It was a notion she had, Mrs. McCutcheon, the district visitor, explained, that would not let her rest till her "paper" was made out. For her, born in the wilderness, death had no such terror as prying eyes.
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