“Now what,” said Panky as they went upstairs, “does that woman mean—for she means something? Black and white horses indeed!”
“I do not know what she means to do,” said the other, “but I know that she thinks she can best us.”
“I wish we had not eaten those quails.”
“Nonsense, Panky; no one saw us but Higgs, and the evidence of a foreign devil, in such straits as his, could not stand for a moment. We did not eat them. No, no; she has something that she thinks better than that. Besides, it is absolutely impossible that she should have heard what happened. What I do not understand is, why she should have told us about the Sunchild’s being here at all. Why not have left us to find it out or to know nothing about it? I do not understand it.”
So true is it, as Euclid long since observed, that the less cannot comprehend that which is the greater. True, however, as this is, it is also sometimes true that the greater cannot comprehend the less. Hanky went musing to his own room and threw himself into an easy chair to think the position over. After a few minutes he went to a table on which he saw pen, ink, and paper, and wrote a short letter; then he rang the bell.
When the servant came he said, “I want to send this note to the manager of the new temple, and it is important that he should have it to-night. Be pleased, therefore, to take it to him and deliver it into his own hands; but I had rather you said nothing about it to the Mayor or Mayoress, nor to any of your fellow-servants. Slip out unperceived if you can. When you have delivered the note, ask for an answer at once, and bring it to me.”
So saying, he slipped a sum equal to about five shillings into the man’s hand.
The servant returned in about twenty minutes, for the temple was quite near, and gave a note to Hanky, which ran, “Your wishes shall be attended to without fail.”
“Good!” said Hanky to the man. “No one in the house knows of your having run this errand for me?”
“No one, sir.”