“Is it that I may begin the packing of your bag for you, Your Excellency, before I go for those necessities of my own?” I asked of him.

“Won’t be time for you to go home, boy,” he answered me, looking at a clock upon the mantel over his large fireplace.  “You are still in your evening clothes, I see.  But that’s easy:  you climb into that pink coat and a pair of those corduroy trousers of mine you see hanging in my dressing room.  I haven’t hunted for two years but they are still there.  Put linen in that saddlebag on the shelf for us both out of the drawers in the old chest over there.  Take heavy socks to go under the leggings.  You’d better put on a flannel shirt, too, and take an extra one for both of us.  We’ll travel light.  I’ll only be in the bath a couple of minutes.”  With which assurance he entered the room of the bath and closed the door upon me.

“Mon Dieu, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye!” was all that I allowed myself to exclaim as I made a very quick rush for that dressing room, switched on the light, flung off my coat, seized a pair of corduroy riding breeches that hung in a corner beside another pair, discarded my own of broadcloth and struggled with both of my legs the same moment into them.  Then in a hurry as great as I shall ever know I discovered a gray flannel shirt in a drawer of the very tall old mahogany chest and inserted myself into that with an equal rapidity.  A wide leather belt made the two very large garments secure around my waist and I again allowed breath to come into my lungs.  I then opened a very queer bag which I knew to be for a saddle, that was upon a shelf in the dressing room, and began to put things into it according to directions of the Gouverneur Faulkner.  The other pair of those riding breeches I laid with another of the flannel shirts in a great conspicuousness upon a chair in the bedroom directly in front of the door from the dressing room.

“We’re going to make a record get-away, boy,” said that Gouverneur Faulkner to me as in a few minutes he came, clothed in those riding trousers and that flannel shirt, to the door of his dressing room, where I was just making a finish of putting needful clothing into his bag.  “You’ll find the other things we need in the bathroom.  Put it all in while I get together a few papers I want.  We can start now in two minutes.”

“All is ready now, my Gouverneur Faulkner,” I made the announcement after a wading into that very wet room of the bath and a return.

“Here, give me the bag, and you go ahead with this electric torch.  Quiet now,” admonished that Gouverneur Faulkner to me as we took our departure through the dark hall.

“This is the maddest escapade that a Governor of this ancient State has ever undertaken, and the weight of years has slid from me, boy,” said that Gouverneur Faulkner to me as the Cherry made a long glide from the city out into the open road.