to
him more ominously wooden than ever before, and quite wonderfully long.
"What a queer, foreign-looking chap he is," he thought to himself,
smiling from a distance with friendly buoyancy. And directly they came
together he began to talk with the kind intention of burying the
awkwardness of failure under a heap of words. It looked as if the great
assault threatened for that night were going to fizzle out. An inferior
henchman of "that brute Cheeseman" was up boring mercilessly a very thin
House with some shamelessly cooked statistics. He, Toodles, hoped he
would bore them into a count out every minute. But then he might be only
marking time to let that guzzling Cheeseman dine at his leisure. Anyway,
the Chief could not be persuaded to go home.

"He will see you at once, I think. He's sitting all alone in his room
thinking of all the fishes of the sea," concluded Toodles airily. "Come
along."

Notwithstanding the kindness of his disposition, the young private
secretary (unpaid) was accessible to the common failings of humanity. He
did not wish to harrow the feelings of the Assistant Commissioner, who
looked to him uncommonly like a man who has made a mess of his job. But
his curiosity was too strong to be restrained by mere compassion. He
could not help, as they went along, to throw over his shoulder lightly:

"And your sprat?"

"Got him," answered the Assistant Commissioner with a concision which did
not mean to be repellent in the least.

"Good. You've no idea how these great men dislike to be disappointed in
small things."

After this profound observation the experienced Toodles seemed to
reflect. At any rate he said nothing for quite two seconds. Then:

"I'm glad. But--I say--is it really such a very small thing as you make
it out?"

"Do you know what may be done with a sprat?" the Assistant Commissioner
asked in his turn.

"He's sometimes put into a sardine box," chuckled Toodles, whose
erudition on the subject of the fishing industry was fresh and, in
comparison with his ignorance of all other industrial matters, immense.
"There are sardine canneries on the Spanish coast which--"

The Assistant Commissioner interrupted the apprentice statesman.

"Yes. Yes. But a sprat is also thrown away sometimes in order to catch
a whale."

"A whale. Phew!" exclaimed Toodles, with bated breath. "You're after a
whale, then?"

"Not exactly. What I am after is more like a dog-fish. You don't k