"Oh, what tittle-tattlers and scandal-mongers you men are! I think he’s so amusing, and every one says he’s a splendid shot.... However, we will make up just a _tiny_ party and you and Lucy shall entertain for me. I shall purposely be very little seen and shall give out my cousins have come over to help me with my guests.... And, _Roger_! If I am to help you you must help _me_. The doctor says I positively _must_ take up my riding again unless I am to drift into being an invalid. Couldn’t you—sometimes—whilst you’re down in this part of the world—come over and ride with me? I can ’mount’ you. You could ride poor Francis’s cob ... not showy but very steady." "I will, when I come back from town," said Roger, and took his departure, not at all dissatisfied with his afternoon. Two days afterwards he thought it might be prudent to see how things were going at the Foreign Office. So he went up to town, changed into town togs at Hankey’s (where their flat was becoming a white elephant, owing to Lucy’s dislike to London, so he arranged to give it up), and betook himself to Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Bennet Molyneux. "Mr. Bennet Molyneux," he was presently told, "is very sorry, sir, but he is much engaged this morning; would you go into the Department and see one of the young gentlemen there?" The Department was a large, long room with a cubby-hole at its further end for the accommodation of the senior clerk, a sort of school prefect who had to keep order among the high-spirited juniors and therefore required to work a little apart from them. When Brentham entered the main room, announced by the office messenger, he recognized two friends of yore and several new, ingenuous faces. There also emerged from the cubby hole a man whom he had known as a junior three years previously: an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend." Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys. They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.) "Rosie" Walrond was a young man—older than he looked—with wavy flaxen hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an exceedingly kind heart. _Walrond_: "Hullo! Here’s _Brentham_, the rescuer of beleaguered Gospellers. We’ve got a grudge against you. You came here months ago and were closeted with Spavins and never gave us a look-in. And we were dying to hear all about the elopement and its sequel. We were prepared to subscribe to a wedding present for a teller of good stories...." Then he added: "D’you admire my grotto?"