“Oh, how dare you?” I cried. “How dare you, Ezekiel? Oh, Mr. Chrysostom, how dare he? Hip, hip, I say—Hip, hip,” but the audience remained silent and evidently confused. In fact the effect upon them of Ezekiel’s proposal must have been exasperating in the extreme, since they had all opened their mouths and protruded their upper lips preparatory to cheering, as I had suggested. They had then been obliged, just as they had taken their breaths, to retract their upper lips again and close their mouths, and were naturally reluctant, in spite of my further exhortation, to resume a process once frustrated. Nevertheless many of them did so, although they failed in its final consummation, with the lamentable result that they resembled nothing so much as goldfish breathing in a bowl. “Goldfish,” I cried. “That’s what they are. Poor lost goldfish, without a shepherd. Oh, Ezekiel, Ezekiel Stool! How could you do such a thing as that?” With incredible determination, however, he was already on his knees and in the second paragraph of his supplication; and it was only after I had shaken him several times that he sprang to his feet with a sort of yelp. “Oh, Ezekiel,” I said, “what a horrible noise.” “Leave me alone,” he snarled. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” “Horrible noise,” I said, “horrible, horrible. Isn’t it a horrible noise, Mr. Chrysostom?” Then I turned to the audience again. “Let’s say it all together,” I said. “One, two, three, horrible noise. That’s better. Now let’s say it again. One, two——” Then I stopped abruptly, for as I advanced to the brink of the platform, with Miss Moonbeam’s brothers at my elbows, I suddenly became aware of a solitary grey eye regarding me objectionably from the front row. Its fellow was of glass, and the face that contained them, with its high cheek-bones and gaunt cheeks, was that of none other than Mr. Archibald Maidstone, the show-room manager whom I had succeeded. For a moment I could scarcely believe it. But hardly had I recovered myself than I found myself in his arms, with Miss Moonbeam’s brothers left upon the platform, each holding a moiety of the tail of my coat. “Well, laddie,” he said, “it’s your turn now.” I endeavoured to push myself away from him. “Take him away,” I shouted. “Take that man away. Where’s Mr. Chrysostom? Where’s Miss Moonbeam?” The tumult in the hall was now indescribable. Glasses of water were on every side of me. But I thrust them all aside and shouted to the naval officer to bring me the bottle that he had placed upon the table. “The bottle,” I cried. “Bring me the bottle. Never mind the glass. Give me the bottle.” But the naval officer, evidently at his request, had handed the bottle to Mr. Chrysostom. I saw him examine it through his spectacles in his usual pompous and deliberate fashion and then, with a heightened colour and protuberant eyes, exhibit it to Ezekiel and the members of the committee.