'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What about Australia? What about South Africa?'
'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,' Hamilton suggested.
'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches fire in my mind?'
'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'
'Dear old boy, what is the matter with you? You seem to think that I need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think anything of the kind?'
'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't—if it comes to that. But I don't like your getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'
'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the House of Commons—or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'
Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.
'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said protestingly.
'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels. No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the world—Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's grave.'