t once proceed to the India Office and interview one of the
senior clerks who regarded me as his brother.

So, after procuring a _Whitaker Almanack_, and hunting up the name of
one of the most senior, I cabbed to Whitehall. Inside the entrance I
found an attendant sitting at a table absorbed in reading, who rose and
inquired my business, and upon my statement that I desired to see Mr
BREAKWATER, Esq., on urgent business, courteously directed me up a
marble staircase, at the top of which was a second attendant, also
engaged in brown study--for the attendants appear to be laudably
addicted to the cultivation of their minds.

He informed me that I should find Mr BREAKWATER'S room down a certain
corridor, and proceeding thither, I stopped a clerk who was hurrying
along with his hands full of documents, and represented that I had come
for an immediate interview with Mr BREAKWATER on highly important
matters.

He demanded incredulously whether Mr BREAKWATER expected me.

This elevated my monkey, and I retorted, haughtily, that I was the bosom
friend of said Mr B., who would be overjoyed to receive me, and,
following him into a room, I peremptorily demanded that he should inform
his master without fail that Baboo JABBERJEE was there.

Whereupon, with the nonchalance of a Jack in an office, he rang a bell
and desired an attendant to usher me to the waiting-room.

There, in a large gloomy apartment, surrounded by portraits of English
and Native big pots, I did sit patiently sucking the golden nob of my
umbrella for a quarter of an hour, until the attendant returned, saying,
that Mr BREAKWATER could see me now, and presently showed me into the
aforesaid private room, where, behind a large table covered with wicker
baskets containing dockets and memoranda, _et hoc genus omne_, sat the
very gentleman whom I had recently taken for his own underling!

Formerly I should have proffered abject excuses, but I am now
sufficiently up in British observances to know that the only necessary
is a frank and breezy apology.

So, disguising my bashful confusion, I said, "I am awfully sorry that I
took you, my dear old chap, for a common ordinary fellow; but remember
the proverb, that 'appearances are deceitful,' and do not reveal a thin
skin about a rather natural mistake."

Mr BREAKWATER courteously entreated me not to mention the affair, but to
state my business briefly. Accordingly I related how I was a native
Bengalee student, at pr