Page:Pleased to Meet You (1927).pdf/25

 "Nonsense! Anyone who can talk to political meetings as you can needn't be afraid. You mustn't forget that you're a great man. Don't you dare take off those gloves until I tell you. How all this would have surprised Mother."

He relapsed into dogged and wary silence. Political meetings are easy, he reflected, but this social racket is something quite different. If we're our natural selves, the aristocrats will sneer; if we put on airs, the populace will resent it. He thought wistfully of the little home where he and Nyla had been so comfortable.

The taxi-driver, a fiercely moustached and emotional mountaineer, was enormously excited at having been chosen to drive Ilyria's first President to the palace. This would be something to talk about for the rest of his life. His sense of the dignity of the occasion suggested a slow and stately progress with much unnecessary tooting on an old rubber bulb horn. This attracted a dog of no importance who was sunning in the broad Pannonia Platz. With a quick instinct for the unusual he accom-