his own action to his words and ran nimbly up the new terra-cotta steps
of the _Hour's_ home. He left me to pay the cabman.

When I rejoined him he was giving directions to an invisible somebody
through folding doors.

"Come along," he said, breathlessly. "Can't see him," he added to a
little boy, who held a card in his hands. "Tell him to go to Mr. Evans.
One's life isn't one's own here," he went on, when he had reached his
own room.

It was a palatial apartment furnished in white and gold--Louis Quinze,
or something of the sort--with very new decorations after Watteau
covering the walls. The process of disfiguration, however, had already
begun. A roll desk of the least possible Louis Quinze order stood in one
of the tall windows; the carpet was marked by muddy footprints, and a
matchboard screen had been run across one end of the room.

"Hullo, Evans," Fox shouted across it, "just see that man from Grant's,
will you? Heard from the Central News yet?"

He was looking through the papers on the desk.

"Not yet, I've just rung them up for the fifth time," the answer came.

"Keep on at it," Fox exhorted.

"Here's Churchill's letter," he said to me. "Have an arm-chair; those
blasted things are too uncomfortable for anything. Make yourself
comfortable. I'll be back in a minute."