A third party
intervening, suggested that a meeting might be arranged if due
notice were given.
"Then," said Penfentenyou, "I called at the office at ten
o'clock."
"But they'd be in bed," I cried.
"One of the babies was awake. He told me that--that 'my sort of
questions "'--he slapped the pile of cables--"were only taken
between 11 and 2 P.M. So I waited."
"And when you got to business?" I asked.
He made a gesture of despair. "It was like talking to children.
They'd never heard of it."
"And your Opposite Number?"
Penfentenyou described him.
"Hush! You mustn't talk like that!" I shuddered. "He's one of the
best of good fellows. You should meet him socially."
"I've done that too," he said. "Have you?"
"Heaven forbid!" I cried; "but that's the proper thing to say."
"Oh, he said all the proper things. Only I thought as this was
England that they'd more or less have the hang of all
the--general hang-together of my Idea. But I had to explain it
from the beginning."
"Ah! They'd probably mislaid the papers," I said, and I told him
the story of a three-million pound insurrection caused by a
deputy Under-Secretary sitting upon a mass of green-labelled
correspondence instead of reading it.
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