"Oh, good! I beg your pardon! Cornelius, this gentleman is a Government professor and is with us!" said this female of the M.P. species.
"That's right," gushed the Gosling. "We want a few in the enemy's camp both to spy out their weakness and to embarrass them. Now about this University business. I am going to take it up. That history affair now! Scandalous! I cannot tell you what a wave of indignation swept over England when that syllabus was drawn up. Nothing truly Liberal about the whole course, much less Radical. I at once said: 'I will see this righted. I will go to India, and I will beard the….'"
"I think it was I who said it, Cornelius," remarked his much better half, coldly.
"Yes, my dear Superiora, yes. Now with your help I think we can do something, Professor. Good. This is providential. We shall be able to embarrass them now! Will you write me——"
"You are going a little too fast, I think," said the Professor. "I am a 'Pro-Native' and a servant of the Pro-Native Government of India. As such, I don't think I can be of any service to twenty-one-day visitors who wish to 'embarrass' the best friends of my friends the Natives, even supposing I were the sort of gentle Judas you compliment me by imagining me. I——"
"You distinctly say you are Pro-Native and then——"
"I repeat I am intensely Pro-Native, and so are the Viceroy, the Governors, the entire Civil Service, the Educational Service, the Forest Service, the P.W.D., the Medical Service, the Army, and every other Service and Department in India as well as every decent man in India. We are all Pro-Native, and all doing our best in our respective spheres, in spite of a deal of ignorant and officious interference and attempted 'embarrassment' at the hands of the self-seeking, the foolish, the busy-body, the idle—not to mention the vicious. What a charming day it is. I have so enjoyed the honour of meeting you."
* * * * *
"Well, my Scroobious Bird! And have they this day roasted in India such a Gosling as shall never be put out?" inquired the non-moral and unphilosophic Professor of Moral Philosophy, a little later.
"No, my Augustus," was the reply. "It's a quacking little gosling, and won't lead to any great commotion m the farm-yard. Nasty little bird—like a sat-bai or whatever they call those appalling things 'seven-sister' birds, aren't they, that chatter and squeak all day."