Bleak smiled wanly at the thrust.

“All right,” he said.  “Let’s go.  But what’s your idea, Miss Chuff?  We must have something to base negotiations on.”

“Wait and see,” she cried gayly.  “We’ll talk it over as we go along.”

Mrs. Bleak aroused her children, who had fallen asleep, and climbed back into the wheelbarrow.

“I don’t know that I approve of that scheme of making Dunraven the Perpetual Souse,” she remarked.  “I can imagine what my poor mother would say about it if she were living.  She came of fine old Kentucky stock, and it would humiliate her deeply to know to what a level we had been reduced.”

“My dear Mrs. Bleak,” said Quimbleton, as he hoisted his betrothed into the saddle and the pilgrims began to move, “I know of a great deal of good old Kentucky stock that has had a far worse fate than that in these tragic years.”

CHAPTER VIII

WITH BENEFIT OF CLERGY

Through the sullen streets of the terrorized city Miss Chuff, Quimbleton and Bleak proceeded toward the great building where the Pan-Antis had their headquarters.  They had left Mrs. Bleak, the children and the horse at a quiet soda-fountain in the suburbs.  After repeated application over the wireless telephone, the terrible Bishop—­the Prohibishop, as Quimbleton called him—­had agreed to grant them an audience, and had accorded them safe-conduct through the chuff troops.  Even so, their progress was difficult.  Every few hundred yards they were halted and subjected to curt inquiry.  Men and women who had heard of their gallant struggle against fearful odds pressed forward in an attempt to seize their hands, to embrace and applaud them, but these evidences of enthusiasm were sternly repressed by the chuffs.

Bleak was frankly nervous as they approached the Chuff Building.

“What line of talk are we going to adopt?” he asked.

“Like any self-respecting line,” replied Quimbleton, “Ours will be the shortest distance between two points.  The first point is that we want to obtain something from Chuff.  The second is that we have some information to give him which will be of immense value to him.  This we shall hold over him as a club, to force him to concede what we want.”

“And what is this club?” asked Bleak, somewhat suspicious of his friend’s sanguine disposition.

“The admirable plan,” said Quimbleton, “is Theodolinda’s idea.  She knows her father better than we do.  She says that his passion is for prohibiting things.  He thinks he has now prohibited everything possible.  We are in a position to tell him something that still remains unprohibited.  His eagerness to know what that may be will make him yield to our request.”