"Backstairs from Panama, I'll bet
a crown."
"It isn't Backstairs, it isn't a consul. Gentlemen, get out your
pocket-handkerchiefs. Mounser Green has consented to be expatriated
for the good of his country."
"You going to Patagonia!" said Currie. "You're chaffing," said
Glossop. "I never was so shot in my life," said Hoffmann.
"It's true, my dear boys."
"I never was so sorry for anything in all my born days," said
Glossop, almost crying. "Why on earth should you go to Patagonia?"
"Patagonia!" ejaculated Currie. "What will you do in Patagonia?"
"It's an opening, my dear fellow," said Mounser Green leaning
affectionately on Glossop's shoulder. "What should I do by
remaining here? When Drummond asked me I saw he wanted me to go.
They don't forget that kind of thing." At that moment a messenger
opened the door, and the Senator Gotobed, almost without being
announced, entered the room. He had become so intimate of late at
the Foreign Office, and his visits were so frequent, that he was
almost able to dispense with the assistance of any messenger.
Perhaps Mounser Green and his colleagues were a little tired of
him; but yet, after their fashion, they were always civil to him,
and remembered, as they were bound to do, that he was one of the
leading politicians of a great nation. "I have secured the hall,"
he said at once, as though aware that no news could be so important
as the news he thus conveyed.
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