"He's getting at me!" he said. "I'm always being shot at. Will you both come in to tea and talk?—I should like you to meet my wife, Burt. She'll take you on. She's a red-hot Tory and a bonnie fighter."
But Mr. Geddes had a committee, and—"A must get on with the Revolution," said Burt gravely.
"What Revolution's that?" asked the Colonel.
"The Revolution that begun in 1906—and that's been going on ever since; and will go on till we're through!" He said the last words with a kind of ferocity; and then burst into a sudden jovial roar as he saw the humour of his own ultra-seriousness.
Mrs. Lewknor, who had been watching the interview from the loggia, called to her husband as he returned to the house.
"Who was that man with Mr. Geddes?" she asked.
"Stanley Bessemere's friend," the Colonel answered. "A red Revolutionary from Lancasheer—on the bubble; and a capital good fellow too, I should say."
That evening the Colonel rang up Mr. Geddes to ask about the engineer.
"He's the new type of intellectual artizan," the minister informed him. "The russet-coated captain who knows what he's fighting for and loves what he knows. Unless I'm mistaken he's going to play a considerable part in our East-end politics down here." He gave the other the engineer's address, adding with characteristic breadth,
"It might be worth your while to follow him up perhaps, Colonel."