Sir Godfrey Dewburn was a fortunate Irish soldier, who—because he had a capacity for getting on well with everybody—had held a high administrative position in India, though outside the ranks of the Indian Civil Service. He did well over the Prince of Wales’s visit in organizing successful durbars, nautch dances and perfect shooting picnics, in which record tigers were bagged. He did better still in an aftermath of the Imperial visit, when the Duke of Ulster and the Hereditary Prince of Baden came out to shoot in Dewburn’s new province. He had also married, with very wise prevision, a daughter of the Choselwhit who was legal adviser to the Circumlocution Office. When it was felt that Sir James Eccles must be thrown over to avoid a breach with Germany, which threatened a Franco-Germano-Russian alliance against us, somebody—perhaps the Duke of Ulster, who still remembered Dewburn’s champagne cup, cooled with the snows of the Himalaya and tendered just at the psychological moment when the most splendid of the tigers had fallen to the Royal rifle—suggested Dewburn for the post. And as he was backed up by the India Office, who wanted to weed their Civil Service of outsiders, and by Molyneux who thought Dewburn’s dinners at the "Rag" quite the best in London, Lord Wiltshire, tired and preoccupied over the Parnell letters, gave way and appointed Dewburn. Lord Silchester’s suggestion of Brentham was deemed "indelicate," emphasized as it was by Sibyl, to whom Lord Wiltshire had taken a whimsical dislike. Dewburn, when he came out, posed as a jolly good fellow who praised every one all round and enchanted Mrs. Bazzard by his manners and easy cordiality. But after a bit, Brentham’s efficiency got on his nerves. It was irritating to hear his subordinate—so much better fitted than he for the post, some might have said—prattling and swearing in Swahili and Unguja Arabic, and rather markedly doing without an interpreter. Dewburn spoke French well and a little bad Hindustani, but there his linguistics ended; and his brain sutures being closed would admit no knowledge of an African tongue. Then there was Spencer Bazzard always at hand, serviceable unto servility, ready to jot inspirations and judgments down on a writing-pad with some prehistoric form of the fountain-pen or indelible pencil, and reproduce these utterances afterwards, conveniently elaborated. Brentham, on the other hand, preferred putting in a draft of his own, which took quite an independent line and might have led H.M. Government to do something, make up their minds to some definite course.... Then again, Brentham’s real destination was the German mainland.... The situation there was strained.