“He is a detestable dog, of course,” declared the Celebrity.

And the cock in the inn yard was silent.

“I should love to be able to quote from a book at will,” said the quieting voice, for the sake of putting an end to an argument which bid fair to become disagreeable.  “How do you manage to do it?”

“It was simply a passage that stuck in my mind,” he answered modestly; “when I read a book I pick them up just as a roller picks up a sod here and there as it moves over the lawn.”

“I should think you might write, Mr. Allen, you have such an original way of putting things!”

“I have thought of it,” returned the Celebrity, “and I may, some fine day.”

Wherewith he thrust his hands into his pockets and sauntered off with equanimity undisturbed, apparently unaware of the impression he had left behind him.  And the Fifth Reader story popped into my head of good King William (or King Frederick, I forgot which), who had a royal fancy for laying aside the gayeties of the court and straying incognito among his plainer subjects, but whose princely origin was invariably detected in spite of any disguise his Majesty could invent.

CHAPTER VII

I experienced a great surprise a few mornings afterwards.  I had risen quite early, and found the Celebrity’s man superintending the hoisting of luggage on top of a van.

“Is your master leaving?” I asked.

“He’s off to Mohair now, sir,” said the valet, with a salute.

At that instant the Celebrity himself appeared.

“Yes, old chap, I’m off to Mohair,” he explained.  “There’s more sport in a day up there than you get here in a season.  Beastly slow place, this, unless one is a deacon or a doctor of divinity.  Why don’t you come up, Crocker?  Cooke would like nothing better; he has told me so a dozen times.”

“He is very good,” I replied.  I could not resist the temptation to add, “I had an idea Asquith rather suited your purposes just now.”

“I don’t quite understand,” he said, jumping at the other half of my meaning.

“Oh, nothing.  But you told me when you came here, if I am not mistaken, that you chose Asquith because of those very qualities for which you now condemn it.”

“Magna est vis consuetudinis,” he laughed; “I thought I could stand the life, but I can’t.  I am tired of their sects and synods and sermons.  By the way,” said he pulling at my sleeve, “what a deuced pretty girl that Miss Thorn is!  Isn’t she?  Rollins, where’s the cart?  Well, good-bye, Crocker; see you soon.”

He drove rapidly off as the clock struck six, and an uneasy glance he gave the upper windows did not escape me.  When Farrar appeared, I told him what had happened.

“Good riddance,” he replied sententiously.