anybody in the audience care to ask either of the speakers a
question?' he gravely inquired.

Poor Dick was the picture of abject dismay. This was a flank attack
for which he was totally unprepared. An elderly gentleman, in the body
of the hall, rose slowly, adjusted his spectacles, and, with grave
deliberation, announced that he wished to submit a question to the
first speaker. Dick looked like a man whose death-warrant was about to
be signed. The problem was duly enunciated, and it turned out to be a
carefully planned and decidedly awkward one. I wondered how on earth
poor Dick would face the music. He paused, as though considering his
reply. Then a sudden light mantled his face. A wicked twinkle
sparkled in his eye. He rose smartly, looked straight into the face of
his questioner, and exclaimed confidently:

'Codlin's your friend, not Short!'

The audience was completely mystified. The answer had no more to do
with the question than Dutch cheese has to do with the rings of Saturn.
For a fraction of a second you could have heard a pin drop. I saw that
the only way of saving the situation was by commencing to applaud, and
I smote my hands together with a will, and laughed as I have rarely
allowed myself to laugh in public. The sympathetic section of the
audience followed suit. A general impression seemed to exist that,
somehow, Dick had made a particularly clever point. The old gentleman
who had asked the question was manifestly bewildered; he gazed
helplessly round on his cheering fellow citizens, and evidently
regarded the answer as some recondite allusion of which it would never
do to display his ignorance. He resumed his seat, discomfited and
ashamed. When the applause and laughter had somewhat subsided, I rose
and moved a vote of thanks to the chairman, which Dick seconded,
though, I fancied, without much show of enthusiasm. Thus the meeting,
which Dick never forgot, came to an eminently satisfactory end,
although I heard privately long afterwards that, as the people took
their homeward way along those country roads, many who had applauded
vigorously inquired confidentially of their neighbours the exact
bearing of the cryptic reply on the particular matter in hand.

If Dick lacked laughter on the way across the plains to the meeting, he
amply atoned for the deficiency on the way home. How he roared, and
yelled, and screamed in his glee!

'I had to say something,' he exclaimed. 'I hadn't the