Toughest Viscount
The down train from London stopped at Ringwood, Hants, last week, and Fred Perceval and his boy, and Harry Trimmer and his wife, all of Priddis, Alberta, Canada, got out. Harry Trimmer is postmaster at Priddis and runs the general store. Fred Perceval has had a cattle ranch there for a good many years, but he had to give it up. A dozen deaths among distant relatives made him tenth Earl of Egmont, Baron Lovell and Holland, Baron Arden. He was going to Castle Avon at Ringwood to take possession of his ancestral home.
It was not easy for the new Earl, either. He had taken the Trimmers along to help him out, but at that there was no car at the station to meet them, and the crowd on the platform did not seem to like the checked caps that he and his boy, now Viscount Perceval, wore. Also, the dowager Countess of Egmont was sitting in the home that had been hers for so many years and would, so reporters told Fred Perceval, refuse to move out.
"So the old lady don't want to move, don't she?" said Earl Fred to Harry Trimmer. "Well, courtesy don't cost nothing," and he turned to the assembled newspapermen.
"Do you boys know where me and the boy can get a plate of ham and eggs? I certainly don't want to crowd in on nobody." Viscount Perceval said nothing.
The next morning everything was arranged. The dowager Countess agreed to meet "those terrible Canadians." The new Earl drove to his castle in the village hack, midst exploding railway torpedoes set off by the tenants, and there at the castle door stood a mournful butler in livery with a little black box in his hand. Diffidently, Earl Fred took the little box from the butler, and the patient Trimmers sighed with relief. Their friend was officially installed Lord of the Manor.
The 15-year-old Viscount slammed the door on reporters and cameramen. "Now perhaps you guys will leave my pop alone," he jeered.
"From appearance and actions," wired the English reporters, "Viscount Perceval is one of the toughest 'kids' that ever came out of the American continent."