"Your Majesty may have heard," he began, sarcastically, "of Hammersmith and a thing called a road. We have been at work ten years buying property and getting compulsory powers and fixing compensation and squaring vested interests, and now at the very end, the thing is stopped by a fool. Old Prout, who was Provost of Notting Hill, was a business man, and we dealt with him quite satisfactorily. But he's dead, and the cursed lot has fallen on a young man named Wayne, who's up to some game that's perfectly incomprehensible to me. We offer him a better price than any one ever dreamt of, but he won't let the road go through. And his Council seems to be backing him up. It's midsummer madness." The King, who was rather inattentively engaged in drawing the Provost's nose with his finger on the window-pane, heard the last two words. "What a perfect phrase that is!" he said. "'Midsummer madness'!" "The chief point is," continued Buck, doggedly, "that the only part that is really in question is one dirty little street--Pump Street--a street with nothing in it but a public-house and a penny toy-shop, and that sort of thing. All the respectable people of Notting Hill have accepted our compensation. But the ineffable Wayne sticks out over Pump Street. Says he's Provost of Notting Hill. He's only Provost of Pump Street." "A good thought," replied Auberon. "I like the idea of a Provost of Pump Street. Why not let him alone?" "And drop the whole scheme!" cried out Buck, with a burst of brutal spirit. "I'll be damned if we do. No. I'm for sending in workmen to pull down without more ado." "Strike for the purple Eagle!" cried the King, hot with historical associations. "I'll tell you what it is," said Buck, losing his temper altogether. "If your Majesty would spend less time in insulting respectable people with your silly coats-of-arms, and more time over the business of the nation--" The King's brow wrinkled thoughtfully. "The situation is not bad," he said; "the haughty burgher defying the King in his own Palace. The burgher's head should be thrown back and the right arm extended; the left may be lifted towards Heaven, but that I leave to your private religious sentiment. I have sunk back in this chair, stricken with baffled fury. Now again, please." Buck's mouth opened like a dog's, but before he could speak another herald appeared at the door. "The Lord High Provost of Bayswater," he said, "desires an audience." "Admit him," said Auberon. "This _is_ a jolly day." The halberdiers of Bayswater wore a prevailing uniform of green, and the banner which was borne after them was emblazoned with a green bay-wreath on a silver ground, which the King, in the course of his researches into a bottle of champagne, had discovered to be the quaint old punning cognisance of the city of Bayswater.