know there is anything wrong with you; nor, if you
can, that anything disagrees with you.'

'I should like the last delusion best of all,' said he.

'Who would not?' cried the old lord. 'The way I used to eat potted prawns
at Eton, and peach jam after them, and iced guavas, and never felt better!
And now everything gives acidity.'

'Just because our fathers and grandfathers would have those potted prawns
you spoke of.'

'No, no; you are all wrong. It's the new race--it's the new generation.
They don't bear reverses. Whenever the world goes wrong with them, they
talk as they feel, they lose appetite, and they fall down in a state like
your--a--Walpole--like your own!'

'Well, my lord, I don't think I could be called captious for saying that
the world has not gone over well with me.'

'Ah--hum. You mean--no matter--I suppose the luckiest hand is not all
trumps! The thing is to score the trick--that's the point, Walpole, to
score the trick!'

'Up to this, I have not been so fortunate.'

'Well, who knows what's coming! I have just asked the Foreign Office people
to give you Guatemala; not a bad thing, as times go.'

'Why, my lord, it's banishment and barbarism together. The pay is
miserable! It _is_ far away, and it _is_ not Pall Mall or the Rue Rivoli.'

'No, not that. There is twelve hundred for salary, and something for a
house, and something more for a secretary that you don't keep, and an
office that you need not have. In fact, it makes more than two thousand;
and for a single man in a place where he cannot be extravagant, it will
suffice.'

'Yes, my lord; but I was presumptuous enough to imagine a condition in
which I should not be a single man, and I speculated on the possibility
that another might venture to share even poverty as my companion.'

'A woman wouldn't go there--at least, she ought not. It's all bush life,
or something like it. Why should a woman bear that? or a man ask her to do
so?'

'You seem to forget, my lord, that affections may be engaged, and pledges
interchanged.'

'Get a bill of indemnity, therefore, to release you: better that than wait
for yellow fever to do it.' 'I confess that your lordship's words give me
great discouragement, and if I could possibly believe that Lady Maude was
of your mind--'

'Maude! Maude! why, you never imagined that Lady Maude would leave comfort
and civilisation for this bush life, with its rancheros and rattlesnakes. I
confess,' said he, with a bi