Churchill rose irritably from his low seat. "Confound him," he said, "I
won't see him."

"You can't help it, I think," his aunt said, reflectively; "you will
have to settle it sooner or later."

I know pretty well what it was they had to settle--the Greenland affair
that had hung in the air so long. I knew it from hearsay, from Fox,
vaguely enough. Mr. Gurnard was said to recommend it for financial
reasons, the Duc to be eager, Churchill to hang back unaccountably. I
never had much head for details of this sort, but people used to explain
them to me--to explain the reasons for de Mersch's eagerness. They were
rather shabby, rather incredible reasons, that sounded too reasonable to
be true. He wanted the money for his railways--wanted it very badly. He
was vastly in want of money, he was this, that, and the other in certain
international-philanthropic concerns, and had a finger in this, that,
and the other pie. There was an "All Round the World Cable Company" that
united hearts and hands, and a "Pan-European Railway, Exploration, and
Civilisation Company" that let in light in dark places, and an
"International Housing of the Poor Company," as well as a number of
others. Somewhere at the bottom of these seemingly bottomless concerns,
the Duc de Mersch was said to be moving, and the _Hour_ certainly
contained periodically complimentary allusions to their higher
philanthropy and dividend-earning prospects. But that was as much as I
knew. The same people--people one met in smoking-rooms--said that the
Trans-Greenland Railway was the last card of de Mersch. British
investors wouldn't trust the Duc without some sort of guarantee from
the British Government, and no other investor would trust him on any
terms. England was to guarantee something or other--the interest for a