“Up to the twenty-fifth of October I shouldn’t have said so,” I replied.  “But since then a great many people have taken to me.  Not quite like DORIS KEANE, you know, but still I have distributed in a little more than a month no fewer than three dozen photographs of myself two and a-half inches square.  Your consul at New York took two, the French Chamber of Commerce took three, and I am having some more ready for the time when I go to make application for my emergency ration card, in case your food department proves equally susceptible.  I have been asked out a great deal.  The State Department at Washington made me come down for several weekends and your Military Officer at home had me in on three successive days.”

“Mr. Smith,” she said, “you seem an honest man.  Do you, in your heart, believe yourself good enough for my Edith?”

“Had you asked me that six weeks ago,” I said, “I should have answered ‘No.’  Before I spoke to Edith, that very same question flashed up within me.  I saw the golden sheen of her hair in the moonlight—­for you do sometimes have moonlight here in London—­and wondered whether I had the right to speak.  Of course I was not good enough for her, but still I felt that I was not altogether unfit.  I might justly ask for her in the face of high Heaven, the Passport Bureau at Washington, the War Zone Bureau at the Custom-House, the head clerk at the Cunard office, the watchman at the pier, the official who changed my American money into your own very confusing monetary system, the man at the head of the gang-plank, the man at the foot of the gang-plank, the steward who filled my alien’s declaration, the steward who gave me my landing-card, several battalions of control officers, and approximately half the Allied diplomatic services.  When I spoke to Edith I had all the documents in my breast-pocket, and my heart glowed with justifiable confidence beneath them.  The dear girl never asked for my college certificate and my luggage check, but I have them all here.”

“Perhaps it isn’t necessary,” she said.  “You may have her, my dear boy.”

“Without even looking at my Czecho-Slovak vise my club dues for 1918, and my inoculation receipt for typhoid and paratyphoid A and B?” I stammered.

“You have a nice face,” she said.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “WOT’S OUR NOO M.P.’S BIZNESS?”

“’E’S IN THE JOBMASTERING LINE I THINK.  I ’EARD ’E ARST TO BE SENT BACK TO ’ELP CLEAN OUT THE ORGEAN STABLES.”]

* * * * *

OUR GREAT UNKNOWN.

First Official.  I say, who is the Head of the Thingumyjig Ministry—­the one at the Hotel Giorgione?

Second Official.  Haven’t an idea.  I thought it had been wound up.

First Official.  Well, I’m not so sure of that.  There was an announcement about it in the papers, and then an official dementi, and then the Minister resigned, and now I hear he has been reappointed.