no passionate boy_'--We are talking of Captain
Hunken, remember."

Cai nodded. "It's true as gospel, Mr Benny. But you have a wonderful
way o' putting things."

In this way--Mr Benny scribbling, erasing, purring over a phrase and
anon declaiming it--Cai venturing a question here and there, but always
apologetically, with a sense of being carried off his feet and swept
into deep waters--in half an hour the letter was composed. It was not
at all the letter Cai had expected. It threw up his suit into a high
romantic light in which he scarcely recognised it or himself. But he
felt it to be extremely effective. His conscience pricked him a little,
as in imagination he saw 'Bias with head aslant and elbows sprawling,
inking himself to the wrists in literary effort. Poor 'Bias!
But "all's fair in love and war."

To his mild astonishment Mr Benny declined a fee. "If, sir, you will be
good enough to accept it, as between friends?" the little man suggested
timidly. "You have helped me to pass a very pleasant morning: and it
will be--shall I say?--something of a bond between us if, in the event,
our joint composition should prove to have been instrumental in
forwarding--er--Captain Hunken's suit."

Cai hesitated. At that moment he would have preferred conferring a
benefit to receiving one. His conscience wanted a small salve.
Yet to refuse would hurt Mr Benny's feelings.

"I'll tell you what!" he suggested: "We'll throw it in with another
favour I meant to ask of you, and for which you shall name your terms.
It has been suggested--by several, so there's no need to mention names--
that I ought to go in for public life, in a small way, of course."

"Indeed, Captain Hocken?" Mr Benny smiled to himself; he began to
understand, or thought that he did. "A very laudable ambition, too!"

"The mischief is," confessed Cai, "that I have had no practice in
speakin'. I couldn't, as they say, make a public speech for nuts."

"It is an art, Captain Hocken," said Mr Benny reassuringly, "and can be
acquired. An ambition to acquire it sir,--though in your mind you
viewed it but as a means to an end,--would in my humble view be an
ambition even more laudable than that of shining on the administrative
side of public life. For it is not only an art, sir, and a great one.
It is well-nigh a lost art. Where, nowadays, are your Burkes, your
Foxes, your Sheridans--not to mention your Demostheneses?"

"You'll understand," hesita