Page:The Steel Flea.djvu/27

 The Englishmen kept showing the Emperor the different prime products they had, but Platoff stared and stared, and suddenly said: "Show us your manufactures of molva sugar."

But the Englishmen did not even know what molva was. They whispered together, and winked at one another, and kept repeating "Molva, molva," but they could not understand that such a sugar was made in our parts, and were obliged to confess that they had all sorts of sugar, but not molva.

Platoff says: "Well, then, you have nothing to brag about. Come to us, and we will treat you to tea with real molva from the Bobrinsky factories.

But the Emperor plucked him by the sleeve, and said softly: "Please don't ruin my politics."