‘Without the whisky, if you please, sir,’ said Mr. Warren, in a provincial accent.  He pointed to a blue ribbon in the buttonhole of his coat, indicating that he was conscientiously opposed to the use of alcoholic refreshment in all its forms.

‘Two glasses of Apollinaris water,’ said Merton to the office-boy; and the innocent fluid was brought, while Merton silently admired his client’s arrangement in blue and crimson.  When the thirst of that gentleman had been assuaged, he entered upon business thus: 

‘Sir, I am a man of principle!’

Merton congratulated him; the age was lax, he said, and principle was needed.  He wondered internally what he was going to be asked to subscribe to, or whether his vote only was required.

‘Sir, have you been vaccinated?’ asked the client earnestly.

‘Really,’ said Merton, ’I do not quite understand your interest in a matter so purely personal.’

’Personal, sir?  Not at all.  It is the first of public duties—­the debt that every man, woman, and child owes to his or her country.  Have you been vaccinated, sir?’

‘Why, if you insist on knowing,’ said Merton, ’I have, though I do not see—­’

‘Recently?’ asked the visitor.

‘Yes, last month; but I cannot conjecture why—­’

‘Enough, sir,’ said Mr. Warren.  ’I am a man of principle.  Had you not done your duty in this matter by your country, I should have been compelled to seek some other practitioner in your line.’

’I was not aware that my firm had any competitors in our line of business,’ said Merton.  ’But perhaps you have come here under some misapprehension.  There is a firm of family solicitors on the floor above, and next them are the offices of a company interested in a patent explosive.  If your affairs, or your political ideas, demand a legal opinion, or an outlet in an explosive which is widely recommended by the Continental Press—­’

‘For what do you take me, sir?’ asked Mr. Warren.

‘For a Temperance Anarchist,’ Merton would have liked to reply, ’judging by your colours’; but he repressed this retort, and mildly answered, ’Perhaps it would be as much to the purpose to ask, for what do you take me?’

’For the representative of Messrs. Gray & Graham, the specialists in matrimonial affairs,’ answered the client; and Merton said that he would be happy if Mr. Warren would enter into the details of his business.

‘I am the ex-Mayor of Bulcester,’ said Mr. Warren, ’and, as I told you, a man of principle.  My attachment to the Temperance cause’—­and he fingered his blue ribbon—­’procured for me the honour of a defeat at the last general election, but endeared me to the consciences of the Nonconformist element in the constituency.  Yet, sir, I am at this moment the most unpopular man in Bulcester; but I shall fight it out—­I shall fight it to my latest breath.’

’Is Bulcester, then, such an intemperate constituency?  I had understood that the Nonconformist interest was strong there,’ said Merton.