T.-T. gave me another twenty minutes of Poland. Then he released me, with a final word of warning against putting too much faith in M. Daschovitch. I promised I wouldn't. T.-T. shook me cordially by the hand and said, "It has been a pleasure to talk to such a sympathetic listener." What led me to revolt was T.-T.'s hat-trick. Three evenings in succession he unloaded on me chunks of the burden. Probably he thought the third time made it my own property. I asked advice from Brown, a man of commonsense. "During the Great War," said Brown, "I went down with pneumonia. They painted my chest yellow, and, when I asked the Sister why, she said it was a counter-irritant. That's what you want to use now, my lad. Stand up to your little friend and beat him at his own game." "But how?" I said. "I can't. What he doesn't know about the gentle Czech isn't worth a cussovitch." "Cultivate a counter-burden," said Brown, "and make him eat it as he has made you eat his." When I left Brown it was decided that I was henceforth to be an authority on Mittel-Afrika. The next evening I was purposely unoccupied in a corner of the smoking-room when T.-T. came in, frowning and bowed down by his burden, to which apparently I had brought no relief. "Well, to-day's news from Mittel-Europa is hardly--" he began. "Scarcely glanced at it," I said. "I was so busy with the news from Mittel-Afrika--Abyssinia, in fact." T.-T. looked surprised, partly, no doubt, because he knew as well as I did that Abyssinia is nowhere near the middle of Africa. Then he gained balance and reopened with the remark that "The ineradicable weakness of the Czecho-Slovak is--" "Just what I feel about the Ethiopians," I said. "Of course there is in the Czecho a fundamental--" began T.-T. once more. "Not half so fundamental as in the Abyssinians," I said promptly. T.-T. was puzzled but obstinate. The burden, I think, was rather bad that evening. He tried me with Grabski and got as far as saying that he had little respect for that gentleman's antecedents. I broke in by comparing Grabski's antecedents with the antecedents of B'lumbu, the Abyssinian Deputy Under-secretary of the Admiralty, much to the detriment of the latter. Then I launched out into a long and startling _expose_ of what I called the Swarthy Peril. I told T.-T. that the Ethiopians ate their young, and warned him that, unless he was careful, they would soon be over here devouring his own spectacled progeny. I told him about the Ethiopic secret plans for the invasion of Mexico as a stepping-stone to the subjugation of Mittel-Amerika. I hinted that Abyssinian spies were everywhere--that even one of the club waiters was not above suspicion. For thirty-five minutes I held T.-T. in his chair (may the Abyssinian gods forgive me!). After the first three minutes he forgot his burden and never a word spake he.