aid on Friday
we gave that notion up. What brought me here to-day was to see if the
Major would lend me a set of car cushions. The rats got in on the ones
I have of my own, and they've holes ate in them so as you'd be ashamed
to put them on a car."

"You shall have them with the greatest possible pleasure," said Meldon.

"Not the new ones," said the Major through the window.

"I thought," said Meldon; "that you didn't want to be disturbed, and
that I was carrying on this negotiation with Mr. Doyle. You must do
one thing or the other, Major. Either come out and manage your own
affairs, or else leave them entirely in my hands.--You can't," he said,
turning to Doyle, "have the new cushions unless for some very special
purpose. Is Miss King thinking of going for a drive on your car? If
she is, the Major will lend the new cushions."

"She is not," said Doyle; "not that I heard of any way, though she
might take the notion later."

"Then what do you want the cushions for?"

"It's an English gentleman," said Doyle; "a high-up man by all
accounts, that has the fishing took from Simpkins. He'll be stopping
in the hotel, and he'll want the car to take him up the river in the
morning. The kind of man he is, I wouldn't like to be putting him off
with my old cushions. They're terrible bad, the way the rats has them
ate on me."

"If he really is a man of eminence in any walk of life," said
Meldon--"a bishop, for instance, or a member of the House of Lords, or
a captain of industry, you can have the cushions. If he's simply a
second-rate man of the ordinary tourist type, you can't."

"He's a judge," said Doyle, "and what's more, an English judge."

"I'm surprised to hear you saying a thing like that. As a Nationalist
you ought to be the last to admit that an English judge is in any way
superior to an Irish one. He may be better paid--I daresay he is
better paid, for we never get our fair share of what's going--but in
the things that really matter--in legal acumen, for instance, which is
the great thing we look for in judges--I don't expect the Irishman is a
bit behind. However, English or Irish, the mere fact of his being a
judge doesn't prove that he's a man of what I call real eminence. I
don't think the Major will let you have his best car cushions for some
sleepy old gentleman who sits on a bench and makes silly jokes. There
are lots of judges knocking about that rat-eaten car cushions would be
too good fo