Jerry Sant became observed. He had the haggard florid aspect, the red-lidded prominent eyes, the pendulous lip of a sorry sort of man. He stood up and began to speak, sometimes dragging a sandy rag of moustache or fingering shiny conical temples, but generally holding on by the lapels of a short-skirted broad-cloth frock-coat, protruding black-nailed thumbs through the button-holes in a manner acquired during a week in Paris. His style was geological, so to speak, consisting of various strata deposited at various periods. The surface stratum, representing the Kainozoic Time, consisted of the platitudinous bombast characteristic of the common or oratorical demagogue. Below that, corresponding to the Mesozoic Time, came the ridiculous obsequious slang of the bagman of commerce. Below that again, corresponding to the Paleozoic Time, appeared the gelded English which muscleless feckless unfit-for-handicraft little sciolists acquire in school-board spawning-beds. And these rested on stratum of the Azoic Time, to wit the native Pictish Presbyterian jargon of Mr. Sant's sententious pettifogging spiteful self. These different strata occurred as irregularly as natural strata. They ran one into the other like veins in a fissure, causing displacements resembling those which technically are called Faults; and the tracing and stripping of the same is a task for the ingenious geophilologist. "It's a gospel-truth, comrades. I had used to fhat ye might call know the Pope a few years ago fhen he was just George Arthur Rose and not a pound-note in his purse. I was running the _Social Standard_ oot o' my own pocket, and many's the bit o' work I've let him have. He was trying his hand at journalism then, and gey glad to get it. I may take this opportunity of saying that he owes his footing to me; and most ungrateful he has treated me, comrades, as is the nature of him, proud aristocrat as he is. Not that I look for gratitude in such: but I've often thought when I've heard of him getting on--I mean before as he was fhat he is now--as perhaps he might like to remember him as gave him his first leg up. But no, not a bit of it though. I advised him of as much, once; and he rounds on me and cheeks me cruel. And I'm not the only one neither: I can tell you something else about him. There's a lady-friend of mine----" "Here stop a bit," the chairman interrupted. "You're getting on a bit too fast. What did you let him write for the _Social Standard_ for? Was he a comrade, I.L.P., or S.D.F., or Fabian p'raps? He seems to be rather a high sort from what you say." "A comrade! Tits, man! ma pairsonal opeenion is that he was nothing bit a ... Tory spy. I always thought he was a Jesuit in disguise and now of course I know it. Fhen I knew him first he was pals with the traitor Dymoke----" "Dymoke!!!" Teeth gritted; and the social equivalent for the Roman "Anathema sit" was snarled.