You might well have thought the thing was out after that, but it wasn't. There are things one doesn't believe even if they are printed in a halfpenny paper. To find the reporters hammering at their doors, so to speak, and fended off only for a time by a proposal that they should call again; to see their incredible secret glaringly in print, did indeed for a moment seem a hopeless exposure to both the Buntings and the Sea Lady. Already they could see the story spreading, could imagine the imminent rush of intimate enquiries, the tripod strides of a multitude of cameras, the crowds watching the windows, the horrors of a great publicity. All the Buntings and Mabel were aghast, simply aghast. Adeline was not so much aghast as excessively annoyed at this imminent and, so far as she was concerned, absolutely irrelevant publicity. "They will never dare--" she said, and "Consider how it affects Harry!" and at the earliest opportunity she retired to her own room. The others, with a certain disregard of her offence, sat around the Sea Lady's couch--she had scarcely touched her breakfast--and canvassed the coming terror. "They will put our photographs in the papers," said the elder Miss Bunting. "Well, they won't put mine in," said her sister. "It's horrid. I shall go right off now and have it taken again." "They'll interview the Ded!" "No, no," said Mr. Bunting terrified. "Your mother----" "It's your place, my dear," said Mrs. Bunting. "But the Ded--" said Fred. "I couldn't," said Mr. Bunting. "Well, some one'll have to tell 'em anyhow," said Mrs. Bunting. "You know, they will----" "But it isn't at all what I wanted," wailed the Sea Lady, with the _Daily Gunfire_ in her hand. "Can't it be stopped?" "You don't know our journalists," said Fred. The tact of my cousin Melville saved the situation. He had dabbled in journalism and talked with literary fellows like myself. And literary fellows like myself are apt at times to be very free and outspoken about the press. He heard of the Buntings' shrinking terror of publicity as soon as he arrived, a perfect clamour--an almost exultant clamour indeed, of shrinking terror, and he caught the Sea Lady's eye and took his line there and then. "It's not an occasion for sticking at trifles, Mrs. Bunting," he said. "But I think we can save the situation all the same. You're too hopeless. We must put our foot down at once; that's all. Let _me_ see these reporter fellows and write to the London dailies. I think I can take a line that will settle them." "Eh?" said Fred. "I can take a line that will stop it, trust me." "What, altogether?" "Altogether." "How?" said Fred and Mrs. Bunting. "You're not going to bribe them!" "Bribe!" said Mr. Bunting. "We're not in France. You can't bribe a British paper." (A sort of subdued cheer went around from the assembled Buntings.) "You leave it to me," said Melville, in his element.