This elevated my monkey, and I retorted, haughtily, that I was the bosom friend of said Mr B., who would be overjoyed to receive me, and, following him into a room, I peremptorily demanded that he should inform his master without fail that Baboo Jabberjee was there.
Whereupon, with the nonchalance of a Jack in an office, he rang a bell and desired an attendant to usher me to the waiting-room.
There, in a large gloomy apartment, surrounded by portraits of English and Native big pots, I did sit patiently sucking the golden nob of my umbrella for a quarter of an hour, until the attendant returned, saying, that Mr Breakwater could see me now, and presently showed me into the aforesaid private room, where, behind a large table covered with wicker baskets containing dockets and memoranda, et hoc genus omne, sat the very gentleman whom I had recently taken for his own underling!
Formerly I should have proffered abject excuses, but I am now sufficiently up in British observances to know that the only necessary is a frank and breezy apology.
So, disguising my bashful confusion, I said, "I am awfully sorry that I took you, my dear old chap, for a common ordinary fellow; but remember the proverb, that 'appearances are deceitful,' and do not reveal a thin skin about a rather natural mistake."
Mr Breakwater courteously entreated me not to mention the affair, but to state my business briefly. Accordingly I related how I was a native Bengalee student, at present moving Heaven and Earth to pass Bar Exam, and my intimate connection with the distinguished Bayswater family of the Allbutt-Innetts, who were consumed with longing for free tickets to an official soirée. I then described the transcendent charms of Miss Wee-Wee, and my own ardent desire to obtain her grateful recognition by procuring the open sesame for self and friends. Furthermore, I pointed out that, as an official in the India Office, he was in loco parentis to myself, and bound to indulge all my reasonable requests, and I assured him that if he exhibited generosity on this occasion, the entire Allbutt-Innett family, self included, would ever pray on the crooked hinges of knees for his temporal and spiritual welfare.
He heard me benignantly, but said he regretted that it was not in his power to oblige me.
"You are not to suppose," I said, "that I am a native Tom-dick or Harry. I am a B.A. of Calcutta University, and candidate for call to Bar. In additum, I am the literary celebrity, being especially retained to jot and tittle for the periodical of Punch."
Mr Breakwater assured me earnestly that he fully appreciated my many distinguished claims, but that he was under an impossibility of granting my petition for an invite to the annual summer soirée, owing to the fact that aforesaid festivity was already the fait accompli.
"How is that?" I exclaimed. "Have I not read in the daily press of a grand durbar to be given shortly in honour of Hon'ble Hung Chang?"