The Honorable Percival

								

life, nothing more for him to feel. At least that is what the Honorable
Percival thought. But when one reckons too confidently on having
exhausted the varieties of human experience, one is apt to get a jolt.
Carefully selecting a cigarette from a gold case, he struck a light,
and, after a whiff or two, lay back and, closing his eyes on the stir
and confusion, gave himself up to painful reflections. His shrunken
self-esteem, like a feathered thing exposed to wet weather, was
clamoring for a sunny spot in which to expand to natural proportions.
Had he been able to remain at home, the unending chorus of feminine
praise would soon have dried his draggled feathers and left him preening
himself contentedly in the comforting assurance that Lady Hortense was
in no way worthy of him. But being confronted thus suddenly with the
necessity of supplying his egotism with all its nourishment, he found
himself unequal to the task. Behind every consoling thought stalked that
totally incredible "No." He tortured his brain for possible reasons for
Hortense's deflection, but could find none. Detail by detail he reviewed
their acquaintance from the first time he had bowed over her fingers,
in Lord Carlton's hunting-lodge, to the moment he had touched his lips
to the same fingers in formal farewell on the terrace at Hascombe Hall.
It had been such a well-bred courtship from the start, so thoroughly
approved by both sides, so perfectly conducted throughout!
Then, following suddenly on this smooth course of events, came a series
of bumps that made Percival wince as he recalled them: protests,
evasions, humiliating questions on the part of the public, and then
ignominious flight. He shuddered as he thought of the dull, wet days on
the Atlantic and his hideous week in America. He had been in a perpetual
state of protest against everything from the hotel service to what he
termed the "crass vulgarity of the States."
There had been but one oasis in the desert of gloom through which he had
traveled, and that had been on his interminable trip across the
continent, when for ten brief minutes his blight had been lifted, and he
had caught a breath of the incense for which his soul hungered.
It was at a little station in Wyoming that he, a convalescent from love,
had for the first time in weeks managed to look up and take a bit of
amatory nourishment. He was standing alone on the rear platform of the
observation-car, arms on railing, watching with no interest whatever
the taking off of mail-bags. Suddenly within his line of vision came a
stalwart young chap and a girl, each astride a bronco. They drew rein at
the platform, cursorily scanned the waiting train, glanced at him, then
at each other, and, apparently without the slightest reason, burst into
unrestrained merriment. Percival continued to survey them calmly and
haughtily through his monocle. His first glance had revealed the fact
that the girl was strikingly pretty. Her lithe young body showed round