ood friends, Joe," he went on while Joe
was drawing the cork, "and have participated in pleasant and sharp
adventures. I have called you in at this moment, which may some day seem
to you rather solemn, partly to shake your hand and partly to resume the
discussion on public men which we held some days ago, if you remember."

"Ah!" said Joe, with his habitual insouciance, "when I told you that
they give me the 'ump."

"Yes, what abaht it, sir? 'Ave they been sayin' anything particular
vicious?" His face flying up just then with the cork which he was
extracting encountered the expression on Mr. Lavender's visage, and he
added: "Don't take wot I say to 'eart, sir; try as you like you'll never
be a public man."

Those words, which seemed to Mr. Lavender to seal his doom, caused a
faint pink flush to invade his cheeks.

"No," continued Joe, pouring out the wine; "you 'aven't got the brass
in times like these. I dare say you've noticed, sir, that the times
is favourable for bringing out the spots on the body politic. 'Ere's
'ealth!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, raising the glass to his lips with solemnity,
"I wish you a most happy and prosperous life. Let us drink to all those
qualities which make you par excellence one of that great race, the best
hearted in the world, which never thinks of to-morrow, never knows when
it is beaten, and seldom loses its sense of humour.

"Ah!" returned Joe enigmatically, half-closing one of his greenish eyes,
and laying the glass to one side of his reddish nose. Then, with a quick
movement, he swallowed its contents and refilled it before Mr. Lavender
had succeeded in absorbing more than a drop.

"I don't say," he continued, "but what there's a class o' public man
that's got its uses, like the little 'un that keeps us all alive, or
the perfect English gentleman what did his job, and told nobody nothin'
abaht it. You can 'ave confidence in a man like that----that's why 'e's
gone an' retired; 'e's civilized, you see, the finished article; but all
this raw material, this 'get-on' or 'get-out' lot, that's come from
'oo knows where, well, I wish they'd stayed there with their
tell-you-how-to-do-it and their 'ymns of 'ate."

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, "are you certain that therein does not speak
the snob inherent in the national bosom? Are you not unconsciously
paying deference to the word gentleman?"

"Why not, sir?" replied Joe, tossing off his second glass. "It'd be
a fine thing for the c