"Partly. Next you put a couple of quills into his nostrils." "To breathe through?" chipped in Pallister. "Precisely; and very careful you have to be, I can tell you, considering that it's the one and only way in which a supply of fresh air can be obtained, for the next step is to pour moist plaster all over the face." "How clammy! Much of it?" "Not at first--only a thin layer; but after you've laid a piece of string downways on either cheek, you add more plaster until it's about an inch thick. There it has to remain until it hardens. Then you draw up the two strings, thereby cutting the mask into three parts, and take it off, a firm and absolute replica of the features." "But it does sound rather dangerous," declared Evarne after a moment's thought. "Not with ordinary care and attention. It's quite safe," Jack assured her; "but it feels much worse than it is really. One's whole life undoubtedly depends on those two breathing-quills. I went through it once myself, and I couldn't help thinking of what would happen if by any accident they got choked up. The operator always keeps a pair of scissors handy to snip off the end in case by any chance a splash of plaster happens to settle on it. Still, it needs a deal of nerve, I must confess. You can't hear a sound except an indistinct sort of rumbling and the thud of your own heart like a sledge-hammer. I should think it's a bit like being buried alive. I tried to lift an eyelid, but the plaster held it in an immovable grip, and of course your lips are so sealed that it is impossible to speak a single word. I assure you, it did make me feel queer!" "I wonder," inquired Pallister meditatively, "what would happen if you just _had_ to sneeze?" But Jack declined to venture an opinion. "I'm afraid I can't promise to be done," Evarne declared with some degree of emphasis. "Now, would you expect anybody to consent after that lurid description, Jack?" inquired Geoff, laughing. "It's a good thing Winborough can't hear your vivid reminiscences, or he would suddenly recall some other imperative engagement for Wednesday afternoon." "Perhaps he won't come anyhow," suggested Pallister, bent on teasing. "You should just have heard a Socialist gentleman--one of your pet pals, I dare say, Jack--who was addressing an attentive and admiring audience in Hyde Park yesterday. 'These bloated haristiscrats, pampered from their cots upwards,' he declared, were, without exception, fickle and false and altogether unreliable, and 'ought to be wiped off the face of the globe altogether!'" "But Lord Winborough hasn't been 'pampered from his cot upwards,'" returned Jack unperturbed. "He only came into the title about five years ago, so you see he is scarcely one of those whom 'my pet pal, the Socialist,' was referring to." Pallister ceased grinning at his own wit.