"'That's sufficient, sir,' he said. 'No gentleman can do more. There's my hand, sir. Allow me, sir, to offer you a drink. If you will roll me over, you will find my flask in my coat-tail pocket.'
"Well, I rolled him over, took a drink, and then I brought the mare alongside, helped him in and drove him home to my house. He was a most delightful gentleman. Didn't leave my place until four o'clock in the mornin'. He lives about fifteen miles below me. He told me his name was Toffington. Do you happen to know him, Talbot?" said Gunning, turning to Billy.
"Toffington, Toffington," said Billy, dropping his eye-glasses with a movement of his eyebrows. He had listened to the story without the slightest comment.
"No, Tom, unless he is one of those upper county men. There was a fellow I met in London last year--" (Billy pronounced it "larst yarh," to Oliver's infinite amusement) "with some such name as that. He and I went over to Kew Gardens with the Duke of--."
Gunning instantly turned around with an impatient gesture--nobody ever listened to one of Billy's London stories, they being the never-ending jokes around Kennedy Square--faced the General again, much to Oliver's regret, who would have loved above all things to hear Billy descant on his English experiences.
"Do you, General, know anybody named Toffington?" asked Tom.
"No, Gunning--but here comes Clayton, he knows everybody in the State that is worth knowing. What you have told me is most extraordinary--most extraordinary, Gunning. It only goes to show how necessary it is for every man to be prepared for emergencies of this kind. You should never go unarmed, sir. You had a very narrow escape--a very narrow escape, Gunning. Here, Clayton--come over here."
Oliver pulled his face into long lines. The picture of Gunning taking a drink with a man who a moment before had tried to blow the top of his head off, and the serious way in which the coterie about the table regarded the incident, so excited the boy's risibles that he would have laughed outright had not his eye rested on the Colonel walking toward him.
The Colonel, evidently, did not hear McTavish's call. His mind was occupied with something much more important. He had been finishing a game of whist upstairs, and the mahogany-colored Cerberus had not dared to disturb him until the hand was played out. The fact that young Oliver Horn had called to see him at such an hour and in such a place had greatly disturbed him. He felt sure that something out of the ordinary had happened.
"My dear boy," he cried, as Oliver rose to meet him, "I have this instant heard you were here, or I never should have kept you waiting a moment.
Nothing serious--nothing at home?"
"Oh, no, Colonel. Only a word from mother, sir. I missed you at the bank and Mr. Stiger thought that I might better come here," and he delivered his mother's message in a low voice and resumed his seat again.
The Colonel, now that his mind was at rest, dropped into a chair, stroked his goatee with his thumb and forefinger, and ran over in his mind the sum of his engagements.
"Tell your dear mother," he said, "that I will do myself the honor of calling upon her on my way home late this afternoon. Nothing will give me greater pleasure. Now stay awhile with me and let me order something for you, my boy," and he beckoned to one of the brown-coated servants who had entered the room with a fresh tray for the Gunning table.
"No, thank you, Colonel; I ought not to stop,"
Oliver replied, in an apologetic way, as he rose from his seat. "I really ought to go back and tell mother," and with a grasp of Clayton's hand and a bow to one or two men in the room who were watching his movements --the Colonel following him to the outer door --Oliver took himself off, as was the duty of one so young and so entirely out of place among a collection of men all so knowing and distinguished.
