'Who—that?' I asked contemptuously, glancing at the broad retreating back of my enemy. 'No; who is he?'
'Oh,' he said, shocked and grieved, 'I thought everybody knew who he was. He's a member of the Board of Revenue of——' I quite forget which province he said.
'Indeed,' I said, simulating deep interest, 'and what, pray, is a Board of Revenue?'
To my intense joy I floored that young civilian straight away. He could only tell me that a Board of Revenue was a Board of Revenue, and that a member of it was a great, a very great man.
'Shall you ever become a member of a Board of Revenue?' I asked.
He blushed to the roots of his hair.
'Oh, it will be a long time yet,' he said; and I almost added, 'I should hope it would.' Instead I merely remarked: 'I'm sorry for his wife.'
He was inexpressibly shocked.
'She's devoted to him,' he said reprovingly.
'Yes,' I said, 'I should think she must be devoted to him after living with him for twenty years. If she wasn't, she must have committed suicide long ago.'
That young civilian looked at me sadly, and didn't talk to me much again. I think he thought I was a hopeless Radical and a scoffer at sacred things. So he spent his time in making up to the member of the Board of Revenue, doubtless in anticipation of making him a worthy successor in the days to come.
The other three civilians possessed a much more
