“I wonder it doesn't happen every week,” he answered. “D'you mind my having the Agent-General to dinner again tonight? I'll wire, and he can motor down.”
The Agent-General arrived two hours later, a patient and expostulating person, visibly torn between the pulling Devil of a rampant Colony, and the placid Baker of a largely uninterested England. But with Penfentenyou behind him he had worked; for he told us that Lord Lundie—the Law Lord—was the final authority on the legal and constitutional aspects of the Great Idea, and to him it must be referred.
“Good Heavens alive!” thundered Penfentenyou. “I told you to get that settled last Christmas.”
“It was the middle of the house-party season,” said the Agent-General mildly. “Lord Lundie's at Credence Green now—he spends his holidays there. It's only forty miles off.”
“Shan't I disturb his Holiness?” said Penfentenyou heavily. “Perhaps 'my sort of questions,”' he snorted, “mayn't be discussed except at midnight.”
“Oh, don't be a child,” I said.
“What this country needs,” said Penfentenyou, “is—” and for ten minutes he trumpeted rebellion.
“What you need is to pay for your own protection,” I cut in when he drew breath, and I showed him a yellowish paper, supplied gratis by Government, which is called Schedule D. To my merciless delight he had never seen the thing before, and I completed my victory over him and all the Colonies with a Brassey's “Naval Annual” and a “Statesman's Year Book.”
The Agent-General interposed with agent-generalities (but they were merely provocateurs) about Ties of Sentiment.