ch "bad bank paper" in circulation, Speridionides is not likely to set a
high price on his own scrip.'

CHAPTER LIX

A LETTER-BAG

Lord Danesbury read Atlee's letter with an enjoyment not unlike the feeling
an old sportsman experiences in discovering that his cover hack--an animal
not worth twenty pounds--was a capital fencer; that a beast only destined
to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that recalled the
steeplechaser--that the scrubby little creature with the thin neck and the
shabby quarters should have a turn of speed and a 'big jump' in him, was
something scarcely credible, and highly interesting.

Now political life has its handicaps like the turf, and that old jockey of
many Cabinets began seriously to think whether he might not lay a little
money on that dark horse Joe Atlee, and make something out of him before he
was better known in 'the ring.'

He was smarting, besides, under the annoyances of that half-clever fellow
Walpole, when Atlee's letter reached him, and though the unlucky Cecil had
taken ill and kept his room ever since his arrival, his Excellency had
never forgiven him, nor by a word or sign showed any disposition to restore
him to favour.

That he was himself overwhelmed by a correspondence, and left to deal with
it almost alone, scarcely contributed to reconcile him to a youth who was
not really ill, but smarting, as he deemed it, under a recent defeat; and
he pointed to the mass of papers which now littered his breakfast-table,
and querulously asked his niece if that brilliant young gentleman upstairs
could be induced to postpone his sorrows and copy a despatch.

'If it be not something very difficult or requiring very uncommon care,
perhaps I could do it myself.'

'So you could, Maude, but I want you too--I shall want you to copy out
parts of Atlee's last letter, which I wish to place before the Foreign
Office Secretary. He ought to see what his protege Brumsey is making of
it. These are the idiots who get us into foreign wars, or those apologetic
movements in diplomacy, which are as bad as lost battles. What a contrast
to Atlee--a rare clever dog, Atlee--and so awake, not only to one, but to
every contingency of a case. I like that fellow--I like a fellow that stops
all the earths! Your half-clever ones never do that; they only do enough
to prolong the race; they don't win it. That bright relative of
ours--Cecil--is one of those. Give Atlee Walpole's chances