all the
Doctor," my mirth changed to alarm, which was not lessened when Timothy
Saunders, hearing the uproar and the cry of fire, arriving too late to
grasp the situation with his slow Scotch brain, and seeing me leaning
over the plant frame, picked up the squirt and deluged the unfortunate
man with whale-oil spray!

Coughing and choking, Mr. Somers finally sat up, but did not offer to do
more, wiped his eyes, and said to me in most delightful and courteous
tones, "Would you be so good as to allow your man to bring me either a
bath robe or a mackintosh?"

I was at once relieved, for I knew that the lacerations were of trousers
and not flesh, and at the same time I saw that the crash of glass was
caused merely by the toppling backward of the sash, also that all my
young heliotrope plants that were in the frame where the chauffeur
reposed were hopelessly ruined.

Timothy brought out Evan's bath gown, and in a few moments Mr. Somers was
himself again, and after surveying the scene of the disaster, he
approached me with a charming bow, and drawing a crumpled note from his
pocket said:--

"I promised Bertie Chatterton to give you this invitation for his studio
tea to-morrow, in person, and I fear that I have rather overshot my
promise. Best way to get that brute up will be from the bank wall,--will
damage your fruit less. I will have a derrick sent up to-morrow, or if
possible this afternoon. I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Evan, but I think you'll
bear me witness that the accident was quite out of my control. May I beg
the favour of a trap home? I'm a trifle shaken up, that's all." And as if
the accident were an everyday affair, he departed without fuss and having
steadied my nerves by his entire self-control.

As I stood by the gateway pondering upon the matter and the easy manners
of this Whirlpooler, Mrs. Jenks-Smith drove past. She had met Mr. Somers,
and as her curiosity was piqued by his strange attire, she stopped to see
if I could furnish a clew. She says, by the way, that he is not a New
Yorker, but from Boston, and that his father is an English Honourable and
his mother a Frenchwoman.

A gang of men with a sort of wrecking machine hired from the railroad
company removed the _Thing_ next day, and towed it off, but of course the
strawberries were half ruined; next a man from the florist's in town came
with directions to repair all damage to turf and replace the smashed
plants. Yet that is not all--the sense of peace