“Perhaps that was not altogether the fault of the Ethiopians, was it?”
“Mr Mansfield, I guess I’m a white man. You don’t find me taking sides with niggers against my own colour. No, sir. The fat was just saved by Mr Stratford, the second in command (he’s Sir Egerton now and your Ambassador at Czarigrad), who snatched it out of the fire when we were all making our wills, but Sir Dugald had no hand in it. And now, instead of prancing around in a coronet and ermine robes in the House of Lords, that old man is buried up in Scotland somewhere, cultivating oatmeal and a little literature—that is to say, he makes himself a general nuisance by writing to the ‘Times’ when there’s any question on hand connected with foreign politics.”
“Well?” asked Mansfield again.
“Well, sir, the boss is not that sort. He knows where the pay-dirt lies, as I said, and things will pan out as he means ’em to. If he concludes that he didn’t treat the lady you mentioned handsomely, he may go back to her, but if he does, it’ll be because it suits his book.”
“Look here,” said Mansfield, “if you go on making these vile insinuations against him any more, you and I shall quarrel.”
“You bet!” was the unsympathetic reply. “No, sir, when a man finds himself able to hitch his conscience and his convenience to his waggon together, all that the public can do is to admire his team. Why it should turn ugly and make nasty remarks on the harness I don’t know, and you won’t find me doing it.”
Mr Hicks swung himself off his horse as he spoke, with the air of one who dismissed the subject, for they had ridden up to the house, but Mansfield had been too much disturbed by the new ideas suggested to him to be able to banish the conversation from his mind. When work was over that evening, instead of going out as usual for a second ride, he hung about the room in which he had been writing at Cyril’s dictation, alternately rearranging his papers and trying to place Cyril’s cushions more comfortably.
“Well, Mansfield, what is it?” asked his employer at last.
“I thought—I didn’t know—it occurred to me that you might want a message taken to—to some other part of the country, as you are tied here,” stammered Mansfield.
“You are very considerate. A message to whom?”