"If you have anything for the _Weekly_," he observed, "you’d much better send it on direct to Edinburgh, instead of sending it down here. That will save one postage—a point which I should have thought would occur to a Scotch mind," he added, with a bit of a half-concealed grin. "You are always girding at Scotland, Mr. Fox," George Bethune said, good-naturedly. "I? Oh, not I. I’m sure no one admires the virtues of economy and frugality more than I do. That is why I am pretty certain Shakespeare must have lived in Scotland—I don’t mean ’The rain it raineth every day’—but ’a tanner will last you nine year.’ Now how could he have learned that money could be made to go so far but by observation of the Scotch?" "I know this," said the old man, with some dignity, "that few have seen so much of the world as I have, in various countries and climes; and the most generous and hospitable people—generous and hospitable to the point of extravagance—I have ever met with have invariably been the Scotch. It may suit you to revile the country from which you get your living—" "Oh, I meant nothing so serious, I assure you," the ponderous journalist said at once. "Come, tell me what I can do for you." "I should like to look at the Post Office Directory first, if I may." Courtnay Fox waddled across the room and returned with the heavy volume: Mr. Bethune turned to the street and number that had been furnished him by his spy, and discovered that the name given was Harland Harris—no doubt Vincent Harris’s father. "Ah, yes," the old man said. "Now I can tell you what I want; and I am certain I have come to the right place for information. For while you revile my countrymen, Mr. Fox, because you don’t know them, I wonder whom amongst your own countrymen—who have any position at all—you don’t know?" This was an adroit piece of flattery: for it was a foible of the fat correspondent to affect that he knew everybody—and knew no good of anybody. "Of course the man I mean may be a nobody—or a nonentity—and a very respectable person as well," continued Mr. Bethune, "but his son, whose acquaintance I have made, talks as if his name were familiar to the public. Mr. Harland Harris—" "Harland Harris!" the journalist exclaimed—but with much complacency, for he might have been found wanting. "Don’t you know Harland Harris?—or, at least, haven’t you heard of him?" "I have lived much out of England," the old man said.