"It's some consul," said Currie. "Backstairs from Panama, I'll bet a crown."
"It isn't Backstairs, it isn't a consul. Gentlemen, get out your pocket-handkerchiefs. Mounser Green has consented to be expatriated for the good of his country."
"You going to Patagonia!" said Currie. "You're chaffing," said Glossop. "I never was so shot in my life," said Hoffmann.
"It's true, my dear boys."
"I never was so sorry for anything in all my born days," said Glossop, almost crying. "Why on earth should you go to Patagonia?"
"Patagonia!" ejaculated Currie. "What will you do in Patagonia?"
"It's an opening, my dear fellow," said Mounser Green leaning affectionately on Glossop's shoulder. "What should I do by remaining here? When Drummond asked me I saw he wanted me to go. They don't forget that kind of thing." At that moment a messenger opened the door, and the Senator Gotobed, almost without being announced, entered the room. He had become so intimate of late at the Foreign Office, and his visits were so frequent, that he was almost able to dispense with the assistance of any messenger. Perhaps Mounser Green and his colleagues were a little tired of him;—but yet, after their fashion, they were always civil to him, and remembered, as they were bound to do, that he was one of the leading politicians of a great nation. "I have secured the hall," he said at once, as though aware that no news could be so important as the news he thus conveyed.
"Have you indeed?" said Currie.
"Secured it for the fifteenth. Now the question is—"
"What do you think," said Glossop, interrupting him without the slightest hesitation. "Mounser Green is going to Patagonia, in place of the poor Paragon."