Nevertheless, he reflected that--however the Commissioners might decide (and he would take care to press his opinion energetically)--his letter to the Secretary of State for War had at least done no harm. The Commissioner's visit had obviously been projected before the receipt of it, and at the worst it would enable him to call quits with Vigoureux. He reflected further that these roving Commissions to report were often no index of Government policy, but were simply appointed to shelve, while professing to consider a question which the Government found awkward. So, luncheon over, he sat down and wrote a letter thanking the Secretary for his communication, and very politely offering to do all in his power to make the Commissioners' visit "to these out-of-the-world Islands" a pleasant one. Having copied the letter and read it over with no little approval, the Lord Proprietor dealt briefly with the rest of his correspondence; consulted his pocket-diary, looked at his watch, and, finding that he had an hour to spare before granting an interview to Eli Tregarthen, stepped out upon the terrace, where Abe Jenkins was cutting back the geraniums that had well-nigh ceased to flower. "But is it necessary?" asked the Lord Proprietor. "Here, in the very mouth of the Gulf Stream ... and last winter we escaped with nothing worse than two degrees of frost." "Last winter and this winter be two different things, sir," protested Abe, gently but firmly. "Last winter, sir--as you may have taken notice--we had next to no berries 'pon the holly; and no seals, nor yet no mermaids." "Seals? Mermaids?" Sir Caesar echoed. "Which I've always heard it said, sir," Old Abe went on, with the air of one carefully, even elaborately, deferring to superior ignorance, "as how than seals you can have no surer sign of hard weather. Of mermaids I says nothing, except that with such-like creatures about you may count 'pon something out of the common." "Since," said the Lord Proprietor, "there are no such things as mermaids, we will confine ourselves to seals.... I had no idea that seals--er--frequented our shores."