ut it. I do not
think--I really do not think--that Christmas Eve is a happily chosen
moment for calling Mr. Disraeli 'a Jew adventurer.'"

"Mr. Makins, sir, who wrote yesterday's Liberal leader for the syndicate,
wound up by saying the time had gone by for mincing our opinion of the
front Opposition Bench. He warned me last night, when I took over his
job, to pitch it strong. He had it on good authority that the
constituencies have been a good deal shaken by Mr. Gladstone's Army
Purchase _coup_, and some straight talk is needed to pull them together,
in the eastern counties especially."

"You are young to the work, Mr. Parker. You may depend upon it--you may
take it from me--that Spendilove's will not fail in straight talking, on
either side of the question. But we must observe what our Gallic
neighbours term _les convenances_. By the way, has Makins gone off for
the holidays?"

"He was to have gone off last night, sir; but he turned up this morning to
write Sam Collins's 'Tory Squire' column for the _Northern Guardian_, and
a syndicate-middle on 'Christmas Cheer in the Good Old Times.'
Collins sent him a wire late last night; his wife is down with pneumonia."

"Tut, tut--send him to me. A good-hearted fellow, Makins! Tell him I've
a dozen old articles that will fix him up with 'Christmas Cheer' in less
than twenty minutes. I keep them indexed. And if he wants it illustrated
I can look him out a dozen blocks to take his choice from--'Bringing in
the Boar's Head,' and that sort of thing."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but before I send him there's a party of four in
the lower office waiting to see you--one of them a child--and seafaring
folk by their talk. They walked in while I was sitting alone there,
finishing off my article, and not a word would they tell of their business
but that they must speak to you in private. It's my belief they've come
straight off a wreck, and with a paragraph at least."

"Seafaring folk, do you say?" It was a cherished hope of Mr. Joshua
Benny's that one of these days Spendilove's would attract private
information to its door, and not confine itself to decorating so much of
the world's news as had already become common property.

"They asked for you, sir, as 'Mr. Joshua Benny, the great writer.'"

"Dear me, I hope you have not kept them waiting long? Show them up,
please; and--here, wait a moment--on your way you can take Makins an
armful of my commonplace books--eighteen