Dale is a very shrewd fellow, and will make an admirable legislator when his time comes. Although his highest intellectual recreation is reiterated attendance at the musical comedy that has caught his fancy for the moment and his favourite literature the sporting pages of the daily papers, he has a curious feline pounce on the salient facts of a political situation, and can thread the mazes of statistics with the certainty of a Hampton Court guide. His enthusiastic researches (on my behalf) into pauper lunacy are remarkable in one so young. I foresee him an invaluable chairman of committee. But he will never become a statesman. He has too passionate a faith in facts and figures, and has not cultivated a sense of humour at the expense of the philosophers. Young men who do not read them lose a great deal of fun.
Well, to-morrow I leave Murglebed for ever; it has my benison. Democritus returns to London.
CHAPTER II
I was at breakfast on the morning after my arrival in London, when Dale Kynnersley rushed in and seized me violently by the hand.
“By Jove, here you are at last!”
I smoothed my crushed fingers. “You have such a vehement manner of proclaiming the obvious, my dear Dale.”
“Oh, rot!” he said. “Here, Rogers, give me some tea—and I think I'll have some toast and marmalade.”
“Haven't you breakfasted?”
A cloud overspread his ingenuous countenance.