The little man's face relaxed.
“He reminds me of the geese who saved the Capitol,” he said, “a brainless man obsessed with one idea. It is queer how often these fanatics discover the truth. That reminds me,” he added, taking a small memorandum book from his waistcoat pocket and glancing it through. “His Grace has a meeting to-night at the Holborn Town Hall. I shall make one of my usual interruptions.”
“If he has so small a following, why don't you leave him alone?” Dominey enquired.
“There are others associated with him,” was the placid reply, “who are not so insignificant. Besides, when I interrupt I advertise my own little hobby.”
“These—we English are strange people,” Dominey remarked, glancing around the room after a brief but thoughtful pause. “We advertise and boast about our colossal wealth, and yet we are incapable of the slightest self-sacrifice in order to preserve it. One would have imagined that our philosophers, our historians, would warn us in irresistible terms, by unanswerable scientific deduction, of what was coming.”
“My compliments to your pronouns,” Seaman murmured, with a little bow. “Apropos of what you were saying, you will never make an Englishman—I beg your pardon, one of your countrymen—realise anything unpleasant. He prefers to keep his head comfortably down in the sand. But to leave generalities, when do you think of going to Norfolk?”
“Within the next few days,” Dominey replied.
“I shall breathe more freely when you are securely established there,” his companion declared. “Great things wait upon your complete acceptance, in the country as well as in town, as Sir Everard Dominey. You are sure that you perfectly understand your position there as regards your—er—domestic affairs?”
“I understand all that is necessary,” was the somewhat stiff reply.
“All that is necessary is not enough,” Seaman rejoined irritably. “I thought that you had wormed the whole story out of that drunken Englishman?”