over to Ffoulkes.

"Choose your own identity for the occasion, my good friend," he said
lightly; "and you too, Tony. You may be stonemasons or coal-carriers,
chimney-sweeps or farm-labourers, I care not which so long as you look
sufficiently grimy and wretched to be unrecognisable, and so long as
you can procure a cart without arousing suspicions, and can wait for me
punctually at the appointed spot."

Ffoulkes turned over the cards, and with a laugh handed them over
to Lord Tony. The two fastidious gentlemen discussed for awhile the
respective merits of a chimney-sweep's uniform as against that of a
coal-carrier.

"You can carry more grime if you are a sweep," suggested Blakeney; "and
if the soot gets into your eyes it does not make them smart like coal
does."

"But soot adheres more closely," argued Tony solemnly, "and I know that
we shan't get a bath for at least a week afterwards."

"Certainly you won't, you sybarite!" asserted Sir Percy with a laugh.

"After a week soot might become permanent," mused Sir Andrew, wondering
what, under the circumstance, my lady would say to him.

"If you are both so fastidious," retorted Blakeney, shrugging his broad
shoulders, "I'll turn one of you into a reddleman, and the other into a
dyer. Then one of you will be bright scarlet to the end of his days, as
the reddle never comes off the skin at all, and the other will have to
soak in turpentine before the dye will consent to move.... In either
case... oh, my dear Tony!... the smell...."

He laughed like a schoolboy in anticipation of a prank, and held his
scented handkerchief to his nose. My Lord Hastings chuckled audibly, and
Tony punched him for this unseemly display of mirth.

Armand watched the little scene in utter amazement. He had been in
England over a year, and yet he could not understand these Englishmen.
Surely they were the queerest, most inconsequent people in the world,
Here were these men, who were engaged at this very moment in an
enterprise which for cool-headed courage and foolhardy daring had
probably no parallel in history. They were literally taking their lives
in their hands, in all probability facing certain death; and yet they
now sat chaffing and fighting like a crowd of third-form schoolboys,
talking utter, silly nonsense, and making foolish jokes that would have
shamed a Frenchman in his teens. Vaguely he wondered what fat, pompous
de Batz would think of this discussion if he could overhear it.