un' to him to
tell him. He had gone in, but I met Mrs. Jackson an' her brother.

"'What's the matter?' said she, seein' what a hurry I was in.

"'That woman at the gate,' I said, almost chokin' as I spoke, 'wont let
me out.'

"'She wont?' said Mrs. Jackson. 'Well, that's a way she has. Four times
the Bank of the United States has closed its doors before I was able to
get there, on account of that woman's obstinacy about the gate. Indeed,
I have not been to the Bank at all yet, for of course it is of no use to
go after banking hours.'

"'An' I believe, too,' said her brother in his heavy voice, 'that she
has kept out my team of little oxen. Otherwise it would be here now.'

"I couldn't stand any more of this an' ran into our room where my
husband was. When I told him what had happened, he was real sorry.

"'I didn't know you thought of going out,' he said, 'or I would have
told you all about it. An' now sit down an' quiet yourself, an' I'll
tell you jus' how things is.' So down we sits, an' says he, jus' as
carm as a summer cloud, 'My dear, this is a lunertic asylum. Now, don't
jump,' he says; 'I didn't bring you here, because I thought you was
crazy, but because I wanted you to see what kind of people they was who
imagined themselves earls and earl-esses, an' all that sort o' thing,
an' to have an idea how the thing worked after you'd been doing it a
good while an' had got used to it. I thought it would be a good thing,
while I was Earl Jiguel and you was a noble earl-ess, to come to a place
where people acted that way. I knowed you had read lots o' books about
knights and princes an' bloody towers, an' that you knowed all about
them things, but I didn't suppose you did know how them same things
looked in these days, an' a lunertic asylum was the only place where
you could see 'em. So I went to a doctor I knowed,' he says, 'an' got
a certificate from him to this private institution, where we could stay
for a while an' get posted on romantics.'

"'Then,' says I, 'the upshot was that you wanted to teach a lesson.'

"'Jus' that,' says he.

"'All right,' says I; 'it's teached. An' now let's get out of this as
quick as we kin.'

"'That'll suit me,' he says, 'an' we'll leave by the noon train. I'll go
an' see about the trunk bein' sent down.'

"So off he went to see the man who kept the house, while I falls to
packin' up the trunk as fast as I could."

"Weren't you dreadfully angry at him?" asked Euphemia, who,