Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/187

Rh IV

" Theign's not yet here!" Lord John had to resign himself as he greeted his American ally. "But he told me I should find you."

"He has kept me waiting," that gentleman returned—"but what's the matter with him anyway?"

"The matter with him"—Lord John treated such ignorance as irritating—"must of course be this beastly thing in the 'Journal.'"

Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such connections. "What's the matter with the beastly thing?"

"Why, aren't you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at you?"

"If you call that a regular dig you can't have had much experience of the Papers. I've known them to dig much deeper."

"I've had no experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do you mean to say," asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy, "that you don't unpleasantly feel it?"

"Feel it where, my dear sir?"