[Illustration: HIPPOPOPOLIS EXPLAINS]

"Excuse me, Hippopopolis," I put in, interrupting him fearlessly for
the moment, "pray don't try to deceive me by any such statement as
that. I don't know very much, but I know something about Mercury, and
when you say he puts other people's money into his pockets, I am in a
position to prove otherwise. From five years of age up to the present
time I have been brought up in a home where a bronze statue of
Mercury, said to be the most perfect resemblance in all the statuary
of the world, classic or otherwise, has been the most conspicuous
ornament. At ten I could reproduce on paper with my pencil every line,
every shade, every curve, every movement of the effigy in so far as
my artistic talent would permit, and I know that Mercury not only had
no pocket, but wore no garments in which even so little as a change
pocket could have been concealed. Wherefore there must be some mistake
about your charge."

Hippopopolis laughed.

"Humph!" he said. "It is very evident that you people over the sea
have very superficial notions of things here. When Mercury posed for
that statue, like most of you people who have your photographs taken,
he posed in full evening dress. That is why there is so little of it
in evidence. But in his business suit, Mercury is a very different
sort of a person. Even in Olympus he'd have been ruled off the stock
exchange if he'd ventured to appear there as scantily attired as he is
in most of his statuary appearances. You certainly are not so green as
to suppose that that suit he wears in his statues is the whole extent
of his wardrobe?"