her leant his head back again. "Pray what do you recommend?" he
asked almost listlessly.

"Why--politics, for example."

The Duke nodded, with an air of according to the suggestion a certain
respect. "Unhappily I am too much of a foreigner," he commented. "I know
Englishmen and their affairs too imperfectly. Sometime--perhaps."

"And philanthropic work--you don't care about that," pursued the other.

"Oh--we go not so far as that," said his Grace, with a deprecatory wave
of the hands. "My wife finds many interests in it, only she would not
like to have you call it philanthropical. She is London-born, and it
is a great pleasure to her to be of assistance to poorer young women in
London, who have so little done for them by the community, and can do
so little for themselves. I am much less skeptical about that particular
work, I may tell you, than about philanthropy in general. In fact, I am
quite clear that it is doing good. At least it is doing a kindness, and
that is a pleasant occupation. We are really not so idle as one might
think. We work at it a good deal, my wife and I."

"So am I London-born," Thorpe remarked, with a certain irrelevancy.
After a moment's pause he turned a sharply enquiring glance upon his
guest. "This thing that you're doing in London--does it give you any
'pull' there?" "Pull?" repeated the other helplessly.

"If there was something you wanted the people of London to do, would
they do it for you because of what you've been doing for them--or for
their girls?"

The Duke looked puzzled for a moment. "But it isn't conceivable that I
should want London to do anything--unless it might be to consume its own
smoke," he observed.

"Quite so!" said Thorpe, rising bulkily to his feet, but signifying by a
gesture that his companion was to remain seated. He puffed at his cigar
till its tip gleamed angrily through the smoke about him, and moved a
few steps with his hands in his pockets. "That is what I wanted to get
at. Now I'm London-born, I've got the town in my blood. The Thorpes have
been booksellers there for generations. The old name is over the old
shop still. I think I know what Londoners are like; I ought to. It's my
belief that they don't want gifts. They'll take 'em, but it isn't what
they want. They're a trading people--one of the oldest in the world.
Commercial traditions, the merchant's pride--these are bred in their
bones. They don't want something for nothing. They like an honest
bar