His master had a packet of papers ready, easy for the pocket.

‘By the way, Skepsey,’ he said, ’if a man named Jarniman should call at the office, I will see him.’

Skepsey’s grey eyes came out.

Or was it Journeyman, that his master would not see; and Jarniman that he would?

His habit of obedience, pride of apprehension, and the time to catch the train, forbade inquiry.  Besides he knew of himself of old, that his puzzles were best unriddled running.

The quick of pace are soon in the quick of thoughts.

Jarniman, then, was a man whom his master, not wanting to see, one day, and wanting to see, on another day, might wish to conciliate:  a case of policy.  Let Jarniman go.  Journeyman, on the other hand, was nobody at all, a ghost of the fancy.  Yet this Journeyman was as important an individual, he was a dread reality; more important to Skepsey in the light of patriot:  and only in that light was he permitted of a scrupulous conscience and modest mind to think upon himself when the immediate subject was his master’s interests.  For this Journeyman had not an excuse for existence in Mr. Radnor’s pronunciation:  he was born of the buzz of a troubled ear, coming of a disordered brain, consequent necessarily upon a disorderly stomach, that might protest a degree of comparative innocence, but would be shamed utterly under inspection of the eye of a lady of principle.

What, then, was the value to his country of a servant who could not accurately recollect his master’s words!  Miss Graves within him asked the rapid little man, whether indeed his ideas were his own after draughts of champagne.

The ideas, excited to an urgent animation by his racing trot, were a quiverful in flight over an England terrible to the foe and dancing on the green.  Right so:  but would we keep up the dance, we must be red iron to touch:  and the fighter for conquering is the one who can last and has the open brain;—­and there you have a point against alcohol.  Yes, and Miss Graves, if she would press it, with her natural face, could be pleasant and persuasive:  and she ought to be told she ought to marry, for the good of the country.  Women taking liquor:  Skepsey had a vision of his wife with rheumy peepers and miauly mouth, as he had once beheld the creature:—­Oh! they need discipline not such would we have for the mothers of our English young.  Decidedly the women of principle are bound to enter wedlock; they should be bound by law.  Whereas, in the opposing case—­the binding of the unprincipled to a celibate state—­such a law would have saved Skepsey from the necessitated commission of deeds of discipline with one of the female sex, and have rescued his progeny from a likeness to the corn-stalk reverting to weed.  He had but a son for England’s defence; and the frame of his boy might be set quaking by a thump on the wind of a drum; the courage of William Barlow Skepsey would not stand against a sheep; it would wind-up hares to have a run at him out in the field.  Offspring of a woman of principle! . . . but there is no rubbing out in life:  why dream of it?  Only that one would not have one’s country the loser!