"Ah;—I'm a single man," said Morton laughing. He was too good a diplomate to be pumped in that simple way by such a one as Archibald Currie.
"You'll like to see Lord Drummond. He is here and will be glad to shake hands with you. Come into my room." Then Mounser Green led the way into a small inner sanctum in which it may be presumed that he really did his work. It was here at any rate that he wrote the notes on official note paper.
"They haven't settled as yet how they're to be off it," said Currie in a whisper, as soon as the two men were gone, "but I'll bet a five-pound note that Bell Trefoil doesn't go out to Patagonia as his wife."
"We know the Senator here well enough." This was said in the inner room by Mounser Green to Morton, who had breakfasted with the Senator that morning and had made an appointment to meet him at the Foreign Office. The Senator wanted to secure a seat for himself at the opening of Parliament which was appointed to take place in the course of the next month, and being a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the American Senate of course thought himself entitled to have things done for him by the Foreign Office clerks. "Oh yes, I'll see him. Lord Drummond will get him a seat as a matter of course. How is he getting on with your neighbour at Dillsborough?"
"So you've heard of that."
"Heard of it! who hasn't heard of it?"—At this moment the messenger came in again and the Senator was announced. "Lord Drummond will manage about the seats in the House of Lords, Mr. Gotobed. Of course he'll see you if you wish it; but I'll take a note of it."
"If you'll do that, Mr. Green, I shall be fixed up straight. And I'd a great deal sooner see you than his lordship."
"That's very flattering, Mr. Gotobed, but I'm sure I don't know why."
"Because Lord Drummond always seems to me to have more on hand than he knows how to get through, and you never seem to have anything to do."
"That's not quite so flattering,—and would be killing, only that I feel that your opinion is founded on error. Mens conscia recti, Mr. Gotobed."