Now the Governor-General's Proclamation was regarded in official circles at Dustypore with a sort of traditional awe, as something almost sacred. Fotheringham had often spoken of it as the Magna Charta of the Sandy Tracts, and Strutt generally quoted it in the peroration of his Annual Report. Nothing, accordingly, could be less congenial to his audience than Blunt's coarse, offhanded, disrespectful way of referring to it. Fotheringham's whole nature rose in arms against the idea of this rash, irreverential intruder handling with such jaunty freedom and contempt the things which he had all his life been accustomed to treat and to see treated with profound respect. The moment had now come when to put up with Blunt any longer would, he thought, be simple weakness; the cup of Blunt's misdeeds at last was full; and Fotheringham, his patience fairly at an end, pale and excited, spoke, and spoke in wrath. 'I must beg,' he said, in a tone of aggrieved dignity which Blunt especially resented, 'to remind our junior colleague that there are some things of which his inexperience of the country renders it impossible for him to be a competent judge, and of which, when he knows them better, he will probably think and speak with more respect. This Rumble Chunder Grant is one of them. Cockshaw and I have been at work at it for twenty years: we know the places, the people, the language, the feeling it excites, the dangers it may provoke. The Proclamation, which Blunt is pleased to describe as "confounded," was, we know, a high-minded, well-considered act of a great statesman and has been the foundation stone of all peace, prosperity, and civilisation in the province. It all seems clear to you, my good sir, because--forgive me for saying it--you do not see the intricacies of the matter, and are incapable of appreciating its bearings. For my part'---- 'Come, come, Fotheringham,' said Cockshaw, who had been looking nervously at his watch and knew that it wanted only seven minutes to the hour at which his afternoon game of racquets should begin, 'don't let us drift into a quarrel. As to speaking rudely of the Proclamation, it is as bad as the man who damned the North Pole, you know--no harm is done to any one by that. Blunt is not so nervous about the matter as we are, because he has not had such a deal of bother over it as we have had. My idea is that we have gone into it of late quite as far as we can just now. Suppose we drop it for the present and take it up again in the cold weather?'