"Yes, Hudgins. The fellow has a quiet manner, a soft voice, and the most delightful and archaic reverence for 'the ladies,' as he calls them. It is like what history tells us of General Sam Houston. Hudgins was a screaming success at the dinner."
Seeing that the account of Hudgins's triumph gave Crane acute discomfort, Thomdyke, lighting a fresh cigar, kept on remorselessly:
"Miss Maitland wanted to ask some really representative man to meet Sir Mark le Poer, a very agreeable and considerable Englishman, one of the permanent under-secretaries in the British Foreign Office—it seems he is a great friend of hers. He had been gorgeously entertained by all the retired trades-people who are in the smart set here, but complained that he hadn't met any Americans—they would ask all the diplomats to meet him, fellows that bored him to death in Europe and still more so here. It seems that Miss Maitland had heard that the long, thin, soft-voiced Texan was delightful at dinner—so she asked me to bring him to call, and the dinner invitation followed. Besides Sir Mark and Hudgins and myself, there was Cathcart—a navy man—good old New England fam-
