‘Not half as much as Sir Thomas will about his face,’ said Ollyett.  ’And if you only knew what I’ve left out!’

He was right.  The panel doctor spent his week-end (this is the advantage of Friday articles) in overwhelming us with a professional counterblast of no interest whatever to our subscribers.  We told him so, and he, then and there, battered his way with it into the Lancet where they are keen on glands, and forgot us altogether.  But Sir Thomas Ingell was of sterner stuff.  He must have spent a happy week-end too.  The letter which we received from him on Monday proved him to be a kinless loon of upright life, for no woman, however remotely interested in a man would have let it pass the home wastepaper-basket.  He objected to our references to his own herd, to his own labours in his own village, which he said was a Model Village, and to our infernal insolence; but he objected most to our invoice of his features.  We wrote him courtously to ask whether the letter was meant for publication.  He, remembering, I presume, the Duke of Wellington, wrote back, ‘publish and be damned.’

‘Oh!  This is too easy,’ Ollyett said as he began heading the letter.

‘Stop a minute,’ I said.  ’The game is getting a little beyond us.  To-night’s the Bat dinner.’ (I may have forgotten to tell you that our dinner with Bat Masquerier in the Red Amber Room of the Chop Suey had come to be a weekly affair.) ‘Hold it over till they’ve all seen it.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said.  ‘You might waste it.’

At dinner, then, Sir Thomas’s letter was handed round.  Bat seemed to be thinking of other matters, but Pallant was very interested.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said presently.  ’Could you put something into The Bun to-morrow about foot-and-mouth disease in that fellow’s herd?’

‘Oh, plague if you like,’ Ollyett replied.  ’They’re only five measly Shorthorns.  I saw one lying down in the park.  She’ll serve as a sub-stratum of fact.’

’Then, do that; and hold the letter over meanwhile.  I think I come in here,’ said Pallant.

‘Why?’ said I.

’Because there’s something coming up in the House about foot-and-mouth, and because he wrote me a letter after that little affair when he fined you.  ‘Took ten days to think it over.  Here you are,’ said Pallant.  ‘House of Commons paper, you see.’

We read: 

DEAR PALLANT—­Although in the past our paths have not lain much together, I am sure you will agree with me that on the floor of the House all members are on a footing of equality.  I make bold, therefore, to approach you in a matter which I think capable of a very different interpretation from that which perhaps was put upon it by your friends.  Will you let them know that that was the case and that I was in no way swayed by animus in the exercise of my magisterial duties, which as you, as a brother magistrate, can imagine are frequently very distasteful to—­Yours very sincerely,

     T. INGELL.