borne in upon me before the episode of the couch (which he unwisely undertook to get out through the cellar window) was closed, that humor was Mr. Montrose's adopted rôle in life. He had the typical Englishman's belief in himself as the unassailable, authorized standard, made all the more invincible by his determination to take you light-heartedly in a jocular manner however obstructive your eccentricities might be.
He was a well-authenticated specimen of the upper class old-country ne'er-do-well, which before the War we had reason to feel England was producing and Canada importing on too large a scale.
We were used to them in every shade of (Aryan) complexion from ashy gray to molten red, and in every degree of shabbiness. One knew them from afar by their caps, for the Englishman though he produces both the name and the article, never wears a Derby. He leaps direct from cap to stove-pipe, if he leaps at all. This, of course, with other of his vagaries, may be of climatic origin. It never does to judge a people without living at least six months under their native skies. One may do them unwitting injustice.
