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104 cated with our Ambassador at Washington, and that it is your intention to see your fellow-countryman through if it takes a—may I say leg, Mr. Cricklewick? Young Mr. Smith-Parvis will be there to hear you, so you may bluster as much as you please about Great Britain protecting her subjects to the very last shot. The entire machinery of the Foreign Office may be called into action, if necessary, to—but I leave all that to you. You might mention, modestly, that it's pretty ticklish business trying to twist the British lion's tail. Do you see what I mean?"

Mr. Cricklewick may have had an inward conviction that this was hardly what you would call asking a favour of a person, but if he had he kept it pretty well to himself. It did not occur to him that his present position in the world, as opposed to hers, justified a rather stiff reluctance on his part to take orders, or even suggestions, from this penniless young person,—especially in his own sacred lair. On the contrary, he was possessed by the instant and enduring realization that it was the last thing he could bring himself to the point of doing. His father, a butler before him, had gone to considerable pains to convince him, at the outset of his career, that insolence is by far the greatest of vices.

Still, in this emergency, he felt constrained to argue,—another vice sometimes modified by circumstances and the forbearance of one's betters.

"But I haven't communicated with our Ambassador at Washington," he said. "And as for the Foreign Office taking the matter up—"

"But, don't you see, they couldn't possibly know