“Oh, Percy, dear,” she was saying, “I had quite an adventure this morning.  An awful tramp followed me for miles!  Such a horrible-looking brute.  I was so frightened that I had to ask a curate in the next village to drive him away.  I did wish I had had you there to protect me.  Why don’t you come out with me sometimes when I take a country walk?  It really isn’t safe for me to be alone!”

CHAPTER 17.

The gift of hiding private emotion and keeping up appearances before strangers is not, as many suppose, entirely a product of our modern civilization.  Centuries before we were born or thought of there was a widely press-agented boy in Sparta who even went so far as to let a fox gnaw his tender young stomach without permitting the discomfort inseparable from such a proceeding to interfere with either his facial expression or his flow of small talk.  Historians have handed it down that, even in the later stages of the meal, the polite lad continued to be the life and soul of the party.  But, while this feat may be said to have established a record never subsequently lowered, there is no doubt that almost every day in modern times men and women are performing similar and scarcely less impressive miracles of self-restraint.  Of all the qualities which belong exclusively to Man and are not shared by the lower animals, this surely is the one which marks him off most sharply from the beasts of the field.  Animals care nothing about keeping up appearances.  Observe Bertram the Bull when things are not going just as he could wish.  He stamps.  He snorts.  He paws the ground.  He throws back his head and bellows.  He is upset, and he doesn’t care who knows it.  Instances could be readily multiplied.  Deposit a charge of shot in some outlying section of Thomas the Tiger, and note the effect.  Irritate Wilfred the Wasp, or stand behind Maud the Mule and prod her with a pin.  There is not an animal on the list who has even a rudimentary sense of the social amenities; and it is this more than anything else which should make us proud that we are human beings on a loftier plane of development.

In the days which followed Lord Marshmoreton’s visit to George at the cottage, not a few of the occupants of Belpher Castle had their mettle sternly tested in this respect; and it is a pleasure to be able to record that not one of them failed to come through the ordeal with success.  The general public, as represented by the uncles, cousins, and aunts who had descended on the place to help Lord Belpher celebrate his coming-of-age, had not a notion that turmoil lurked behind the smooth fronts of at least half a dozen of those whom they met in the course of the daily round.