"Zere is ze jugged hare--"

"I think you misunderstand me," I interrupted; "this is a point of
principle with me. Supposing I consume this Czecho-Slovakian mince-up and
then have a piece of Stilton; there has been no war with Stilton, I
fancy--"

"Ver good, ze Stilton," interjected the chorus.

"And coffee--'

"Turkish coffee?" he said.

"There you go again," I grumbled. "Whatever my attitude may be towards
Vienna and Petrograd (and, mind you, I am not feeling at all bitter towards
Vienna), my relations with Turkey are most certainly strained."

"No, not strained, ze Turkish coffee," he cried eagerly; "eet has ze
grounds."

"So have I," I told him; "we will call it the Macedonian coffee. It is you
who insisted in obtruding these international relations on my simple lunch,
and I mean to do the thing thoroughly. Better a dish of Croat Serbs where
love is than a bifteck Petrograd--Never mind, go and get the thing."

When he returned with it I fell to, but my thoughts remained with the
waiter. What a man! With his dispassionate judgment, his calm sane outlook
on men and affairs, shaken a little perhaps in 1914, but since then
undisturbed, was he not cut out above all others to settle the vexed
frontier lines of Europe? I wondered whether Lord ROBERT CECIL might not