that the slip of paper
contained. "There," cried Skeffy, "who knows if we shall not cross the
Channel together to-night? Put on your hat and we 'll walk down to the
Office."

CHAPTER XXXVII. TONY WAITING FOR ORDERS

Tony Butler was ordered to Brussels to place himself at the disposal of
the Minister as an ex-messenger. He crossed over to Calais with
Skeffy in the mail-boat; and after a long night's talking, for neither
attempted to sleep, they parted with the most fervent assurances of
friendship.

"I 'd go across Europe to thrash the fellow would say a hard word of
him," muttered Tony; while Skeffy, with an emotion that made his lip
tremble, said, "If the world goes hard with you, I 'll turn my back
on it, and we 'll start for New Zealand or Madagascar, Tony, remember
that,--I give it to you as a pledge."

When Tony presented himself at the Legation, he found that nobody
knew anything about him. They had some seven or eight months previous
requested to have an additional messenger appointed, as there were cases
occurring which required frequent reference to home; but the emergency
had passed over, and Brussels was once again as undisturbed by
diplomatic relations as any of the Channel Islands.

"Take a lodging and make yourself comfortable, marry, and subscribe to
a club if you like it," said a gray-headed attache, with a cynical face,
"for in all likelihood they'll never remember you're here." The speaker
had some experiences of this sort of official forgetfulness, with the
added misfortune that, when he once had summoned courage to remonstrate
against it, they did remember him, but it was to change him from a first
to a second-class mission--in Irish phrase, promoting him backwards--for
his temerity.

Tony installed himself in a snug little quarter outside the town, and
set himself vigorously to study French. In Knickerbocker's "History of
New York," we read that the sittings of the Council were always measured
and recorded by the number of pipes smoked by the Cabinet. In the same
way might it be said that Tony Butler's progress in Ollendorf was only
to be computed by the quantity of tobacco consumed over it. The pronouns
had cost two boxes of cigars; the genders a large packet of assorted
cavendish and bird's-eye; and he stood fast on the frontier of the
irregular verbs, waiting for a large bag of Turkish that Skeffy wrote to
say he had forwarded to him through the Office.

Why have we no statistics of