`I won't have the time,' interrupted the great Personage. `But I will see you. I haven't the time now - And you are going yourself?'

`Yes, Sir Ethelred. I think it the best way.'

The Personage had tilted his head so far back that, in order to keep the Assistant Commissioner under his observation, he had to nearly close his eyes.

`H'm. Ha! And how do you propose - Will you assume a disguise?'

`Hardly a disguise! I'll change my clothes, of course.'

`Of course,' repeated the great man, with a sort of absent-minded loftiness. He turned his big head slowly, and over his shoulder gave a haughty, oblique stare to the ponderous marble timepiece with the sly, feeble tick. The gilt hands had taken the opportunity to steal through no less than five and twenty minutes behind his back.

The Assistant Commissioner, who could not see them, grew a little nervous in the interval. But the great man presented to him a calm and undismayed face.

`Very well,' he said, and paused, as if in deliberate contempt of the official clock. `But what first put you in motion in this direction?'

`I have been always of opinion,' began the Assistant Commissioner.

`Ah. Yes! Opinion. That's of course. But the immediate motive?'

`What shall I say, Sir Ethelred? A new man's antagonism to old methods. A desire to know something at first hand. Some impatience. It's my old work, but the harness is different. It has been chafing me a little in one or two tender places.'

`I hope you'll get on over there,' said the great man, kindly, extending his hand, soft to the touch, but broad and powerful like the hand of a glorified farmer. The Assistant Commissioner shook it, and withdrew.

In the outer room Toodles, who had been waiting perched on the edge of a table, advanced to meet him, subduing his natural buoyancy.

`Well? Satisfactory?' he asked, with airy importance.

`Perfectly. You've earned my undying gratitude,' answered the Assistant Commissioner, whose long face looked wooden in contrast with the peculiar character of the other's gravity, which seemed perpetually ready to break into ripples and chuckles.

`That's all right. But, seriously, you can't imagine how irritated he is by the attacks on his Bill for the Nationalization of Fisheries. They call it the beginning of social revolution. Of course, it is a revolutionary measure. But these fellows have no decency. The personal attacks--'

`I read the papers,' remarked the Assistant Commissioner.

`Odious? Eh? And you have no notion what a mass of work he has got to get through every day. He does it all himself. Seems unable to trust any one with these Fisheries.'

`And yet he's given a whole half hour to the consideration of my very small sprat,' interjected the Assistant Commissioner.