onnected with the Political Department or the Secret Service or
something, who stared him in the eyes without speaking while he poised a
long drink as though wondering whether it were worth while wasting good
liquor on the face of such a thing as the Hatter.

"You'll come with me and clear the dust from Dearman's eyes at once,"
said he at last. "Made your will all right?"

The Hatter publicly apologised, then and there, and explained that he
had, for once in his life, taken a third drink and didn't know what he
was saying.

"If your third drink brings out the real man, I should recommend you to
stick to two, Bonnett," said the young man, and went away to cogitate.

Should he speak to Dearman? No. He didn't want to see so good a chap
hanged for a thing like the Bonnett. Should he go and slap Augustus
Grobble hard and make him leave the station somehow? No. Sure to be a
scandal. You can no more stop a scandal than a locust-cloud or a fog.
The best way to increase it is to notice it. What a horrid thing is a
scandal-monger--exhaling poison. It publishes the fact that it is
poisonous, of course--but the gas is not enjoyable.

Well, God help anybody Dearman might happen to hear on the subject!
Happily Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman heard nothing, for he was a quiet,
slow, jolly, red-haired man, and the wrath of a slow, quiet, red-haired
man, once roused, is apt to be a rather dangerous thing. Also Mr.
Dearman was singularly elephantine in the blundering crushing directness
of his methods, and his idea of enough might well seem more than a feast
to some.

And Mr. Dearman suffered Augustus gladly, usually finding him present at
tea, frequently at dinner, and invariably in attendance at dances and
functions.

Augustus was happy and Good--for Augustus. He dallied, he adored, he
basked. For a time he felt how much better, finer, more enjoyable, more
beautiful, was this life of innocent communion with a pure soul--pure,
if just a little insipid, after the real spankers he had hitherto
affected.

He was being saved from himself, reformed, helped, and all the rest of
it. And when privileged to bring her pen, her fan, her book, her
cushion, he always kissed the object with an appearance of wishing to be
unseen in the act. It was a splendid change from the Lurid Life and the
mean adventure. Piquant.

Unstable as water he could not excel nor endure, however, even in
dalliance; nor persevere even when adopted as the _fidus Achates_