This kindness, I know, pleased Jack best of all.

So when the major sprang up in delight, calling out, “Why, Jack!” it was with very genuine, although quite opposite individual, sympathies, that the two men shook hands.  It was beautiful, too, to see the major welcome Jack to his own apartments, dragging up the most comfortable chair in the room, forcing him into it, and tucking a cushion under his head, or ringing up Jefferson every few moments for some new luxury.  These he would catch away from that perfectly trained servant’s tray, serving them himself, rattling on all the time as to how sorry he was that he did not know the exact hour at which Jack would arrive, that he might have had breakfast on the table—­how hot had it been on the road—­how well he was looking, etc.

It was specially interesting, besides, after the proper introductions had been made, to note the way in which Jack’s friends, inoculated with the contagion of the major’s mood, and carried away by his breezy, buoyant enthusiasm, encouraged the major to flow on, interjecting little asides about his horses and farm stock, agreeing to a man that the two-year old colt—­a pure creation on the moment of the major—­would certainly beat the record and make the major’s fortune, and inquiring with great solicitude whether the major felt quite sure that the addition to the stables which he contemplated would be large enough to accommodate his stud, with other similar inquiries which, while indefinite and tentative, were, so to speak, but flies thrown out on the stream of talk,—­the major rising continuously, seizing the bait, and rushing headlong over sunken rocks and through tangled weeds of the improbable in a way that would have done credit to a Munchausen of older date.  As for Jack, he let him run on.  One plank in the platform of his hospitality was to give every guest a free rein.

Before the men separated for the day, the major had invited each individual person to make Crab Island his home for the balance of his life, regretting that no woman now graced his table since Mrs. Slocomb’s death,—­“Major Talbot’s widow—­Major John Talbot of Pocomoke, suh,” this impressively and with sudden gravity of tone,—­placing his stables, his cellar, and his servants at their disposal, and arranging for everybody to meet everybody else the following day in Baltimore, the major starting that night, and Jack and his friends the next day.  The whole party would then take passage on board one of the Chesapeake Bay boats, arriving off Crab Island at daylight the succeeding morning.

This was said with a spring and joyousness of manner, and a certain quickness of movement, that would surprise those unfamiliar with some of the peculiarities of Widow Talbot’s second husband.  For with that true spirit of vagabondage which saturated him, next to the exquisite luxury of lying sprawled on a lounge with a noiseless servant attached to the other end of an electric wire, nothing delighted the major