rned out of the Wynd Lord Carse resumed his usual air and
step of formal importance; and Janet held up her head, and tried to take
steps as long as his.

All was right about her going to the President's. He kissed her
forehead, and praised her father for bringing her, and picked out for
her the prettiest flowers from a bouquet before he sat down to business;
and then he rose again, and provided her with a portfolio of prints to
amuse herself with; and even then he did not forget her, but glanced
aside several times, to explain the subject of some print, or to draw
her attention to some beauty in the one she was looking at.

"My dear lord," said he, "I have taken a liberty with your time; but I
want your opinion on a scheme I have drawn out at length for Government,
for preventing and punishing the use of tea among the common people."

"Very good, very good!" observed Lord Carse, greatly relieved about the
reasons for his being sent for. "It is high time, if our agriculture is
to be preserved, that the use of malt should be promoted to the utmost
by those in power."

"I am sure of it," said the President. "Things have got to such a pass,
that in towns the meanest people have tea at the morning's meal, to the
discontinuance of the ale which ought to be their diet; and poor women
dank this drug also in the afternoons, to the exclusion of the
twopenny."

"It is very bad; _very_ unpatriotic; very immoral," declared Lord Carse.
"Such people must be dealt with outright."

The President put on his spectacles, and opened his papers to explain
his plan--that plan, which it now appears almost incredible should have
come from a man so wise, so liberal, so kind-hearted as Duncan Forbes.
He showed how he would draw the line between those who ought and those
who ought not to be permitted to drink tea; how each was to be
described, and how, when anyone was suspected of taking tea, when he
ought to be drinking beer, he was to tell on oath what his income was,
that it might be judged whether he could pay the extremely high duty on
tea which the plan would impose. Houses might be visited, and cupboards
and cellars searched, at all hours, in cases of suspicion.

"These provisions are pretty severe," the President himself observed.
"But--"

"But not more than is necessary," declared Lord Carse. "I should say
they are too mild. If our agriculture is not supported, if the malt tax
falls off, what is to become of us?"

And he