Finally, with a vigour savouring--like a voluntary--of relief, the band attacked "God Save the Queen" once more, the Viceroy retired, the durbarees trooped out, still calm and silent, yet satisfied, and the Commissioner, sinking into a vacant seat, said:--
"Thank the Lord! That's over without a hitch. So India's safe for another six months at the cost of a trumpery title or two."
"I don't see on what ground," began the Under Secretary, laboriously.
"Then ye don't read your Bible. Didn't Adam, when he was given dominion over the lower animals, begin by bestowing names on them? Ah! my dear Mrs. Smith, I didn't know ye were so close. A thousand congratulations, my dear lady."
"You don't mean it, sir," she interrupted, laughing. "Do you think I have forgotten the consolatory verses you wrote me last year when Eugene didn't get anything? You are a fraud."
"Not a bit of it; only an Irishman," put in Father Ninian, with an almost tender smile for the keen, whimsical face which had been friend to him, and foe to him, for many a long year. "Let us have the verses, Mrs. Smith."
"Say ye don't remember them, there's a kind soul," urged the Commissioner, persuasively.
"But I do:
"I dreamt, and lo, the stars fell from the sky
To blaze upon the breasts of naughty men;