our of meeting you."

* * * * *

"Well, my Scroobious Bird! And have they this day roasted in India such
a Gosling as shall never be put out?" inquired the non-moral and
unphilosophic Professor of Moral Philosophy, a little later.

"No, my Augustus," was the reply. "It's a quacking little gosling, and
won't lead to any great commotion m the farm-yard. Nasty little
bird--like a _sat-bai_ or whatever they call those appalling things
'seven-sister' birds, aren't they, that chatter and squeak all day."

"Have a long drink and tell us all about it," replied Mr. Augustus
Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble.

"Oh, same old game on the same old stage. Same old players. Leading lady
and gent changed only. Huge great hideous bungalow, like a Goanese
wedding-cake, in a vast garden of symmetrically arranged blue and red
glazed 'art' flower-pots. Lofty room decorated with ancestral portraits
done by Mr. Guzzlebhoy Fustomji Paintwallah; green glass chandeliers and
big blue and white tin balls; mauve carpet with purple azure roses;
wall-paper, bright pink with red lilies and yellow cabbages; immense
mouldy mirrors, and a tin alarm clock. Big crowd of all the fly-blown
rich knaves of the place who have got more than they want out of
Government or else haven't got enough. Only novelty was a splendid
Pathan chap, got-up in English except for the conical cap and puggri.
Extraordinarily like Ross-Ellison, except that he had long black Pathan
hair on his shoulders. Been to England; barrister probably, and seemed
the most viciously seditious of the lot. Silly ignorant Goslings in the
middle saying to Brahmins, 'And you are Muscleman, aren't you, or are
you a Dhobi?' and to Parsis, 'I suppose you High Caste gentlemen have to
bathe _every_ day?' shoving their awful ignorance under the noses of
everybody, and inquiring after the healths of the 'chief wives'. Silly
fatuous geese!--and then talking the wildest piffle about the 'burning
question of the hour' and making the seditious rotters groan at their
ineptitude and folly, until they cheer them up sudden-like with a bit
of dam' treason and sedition they ought to be jailed for. _Jailed_. I
nearly threw a fit when the old geezer, in a blaze of diamonds and
glory, brought up old Phossy and presented him to the Gander, and he
murmured:--

"'My _deah_ friend,' as Phossy held on to his paw in transports, 'to
think of their casting _you_ into jail,' and old Mother Po