But dimly he understood that with him cerebral excitement, when it reached a certain pitch, overflowed too rapidly into action.  Whereas the gentry, after their centuries of repressive training, could always control themselves.  They could fight, but they could wait for the appropriate moment.  If you stung them with an insult, they resolved to avenge themselves—­but not necessarily then and there; and their resolve deepened in every instant of delay, so that when the fighting hour struck, their heads worked with their arms, and they fought better than the hasty peasants.

And then he thought of the various advantages still possessed by gentlefolk.  How unfairly easy is the struggle of life made for them, in spite of all the talk about equality; how difficult it still is for the humbly-born, in spite of Magna Chartas, habeas corpuses, and Houses of Commons!  Finishing his long ramble, he remembered the biggest and grandest gentleman of his acquaintance, and wondered bitterly if the Right Honorable Everard Barradine had done so much as to raise a little finger on his behalf.

Five days had passed, and as yet not a single official at St. Martin’s-le-Grand had learnt to know him by sight.  Every morning he was forced to repeat the whole process of self-introduction.

“Dale?  Rodchurch, Hants.  Let’s see.  What name did you say?  Dale!  Superseded—­eh?”

But on the sixth morning somebody knew all about him.  It was quite a superior sort of clerk, who announced that Mr. Dale and all that concerned Mr. Dale had been transferred to other hands, in another part of the building.  Dale gathered that something had happened to his case; it was as though, after lying dormant so long, it had unexpectedly come to life; and in less than ten minutes he was given a definite appointment.  The interview would take place at noon on the day after to-morrow.

To-day was Saturday.  The long quiescent Sunday must be endured—­and then he would stand in the presence of supreme authority.

By the end of that Sunday his enervation was complete.  The want of exercise, the want of fresh air, the want of Mavis, had been steadily weakening him, and now his anticipations as to the morrow produced a feverish excitement.

Throughout the day he rehearsed his speeches.  He was still assuming—­had always taken for granted—­that the personage addressed would be the Postmaster-General, and he was sure of the correct mode of address.  “Your Grace, I desire to respectfully state my position."...  That was the start all right; but how did it go on?  Again and again, before recovering the hang of it, he was confronted with a blank wall of forgetfulness.

And there was the bold flight that he had determined on for wind-up.  This had come as an inspiration, down there at Rodchurch over a fortnight ago, and had been cherished ever since.  “Your Grace, taking the liberty under this head of speaking as man to man, I ask:  If you had been situated as I was, wouldn’t you have done as I done?” That was to be the wind-up, and it had rung in his mind like a trumpet call, bold yet irresistible—­“Duke you may be, but if also a man, act as a man, and see fair play.”  Now, however, the prime virtue of it seemed to be lessened:  it was all muddled, unstimulating, and flat of tone.