"Your nightshirt and my nightgown; your toilet articles and mine; a
change of underclothes; a clean shirt and two collars for you, and my
new striped silk waist."

I shall never forget Tom's expression.

"Do you know where we are going?" he groaned. "To one of the grandest
houses in England! Oh, Lord! I ought to have told you. You 'll need
all the clothes you have down here. And--and a valet and maid will
unpack the bags--oh, hell!" After more of the same kind of talk, he
began to cook up some yarn to tell the valet.

Suddenly all that is free-born in me rose to the surface. "Is it the
thing for gentlemen to be afraid of the valet?" I asked my husband.
"Does a servant regulate your life and set your standards?"

Tom was quiet for several moments; then he took my hand and said very
earnestly: "Mary, don't you ever lose your respect for the real things.
It will save both of us." After a while he added: "Just the same, I 'll
have to lie out of this baggage hole."

He did, in a very casual, laughing way--such a positive set of lies that
I marveled and began to wonder how much of Tom was acting and how much
was real.

Tom went back to London on the next train, and reached the "farm" with
our baggage before it was time to dress for the eight-o'clock dinner.

The dinner was long and stupid. After dinner the women went into the
drawing-room and gossiped about politics and personalities until the men