stealing, and the only thing I could think of to explain that was about the
eighth Earl, don't you remember, Mamma? who was beheaded for the Old
Pretender.

But the exquisite part of it all is the lady Tom told the story to was
interviewed directly she got home, I suppose, for this morning in most of
the papers there are headlines six inches tall:

ENGLISH PEER NO CATCH

FATHER RAG AND BONE MERCHANT

GRANDFATHER HANGED

Tom is so enchanted he is going to have them framed for the smoking room at
Chevenix. But our hostess is too unhappy and burns to get him to deny it
publicly. "My dear lady," Tom said, "would you have me deny I've got a
green nose?" She looked so puzzled, "Oh, Lord Chevenix," she said, "why, of
course you have not. A little sunburnt, perhaps--but _green!"_ Think
of it, Mamma! Octavia and I nearly collapsed, and she is such a nice woman,
too, and not really a fool; bright and cheery and sensible; but I am afraid
out here they don't yet quite understand Tom, or Octavia either, for the
matter of that.

There is a lovely place in New York called the Riverside Drive, charming
houses looking straight out on the Hudson. But if you live in that part
none of the Four Hundred or Two Hundred and Fifty, or whatever it is, would
visit you, hardly. These people we are staying with now have a mansion
there but are soon going to move. The daughter, Natalie, told me to-day,
that after this her Poppa would also take a house at Newport, because now