His like at Kew or elsewhere yet.
THE DISSIMULATION OF SUZANNE.
The telephone bell rang just as I was beginning breakfast.
"What is your number, please?" asked an imperious voice.
In an emergency I never can remember my own number.
"Just hold on a minute while I look it up," I begged. Feverishly I turned over the leaves of the telephone directory and, cutting with a blunt finger the page containing the small advertisement that keeps my name before the public eye, at last found and transmitted the desired information.
"Don't go away," said the voice again, this time with a shade of weariness in its tone. "Chesterminster wants you."
I wasn't going away, because before Suzanne left me to visit her relatives in Middleshire I had vowed that nothing would induce me to do so. But Chesterminster wanted me. What should that portend?
"Tell them," I declaimed into the mouthpiece while I instinctively posed for the camera, "that I feel greatly honoured by their invitation and in other circumstances I should have been delighted to come forward as their Candidate. The Parliamentary history of Chesterminster constitutes one of the most romantic chapters in the chronicles of England; but just now I am busy writing verses for next week's Back Chat, so—"