"They ought to send a real live lord out here when Sir Frederick's time
is up. Eh?"

Captain Whalley perfunctorily did not see why a lord of the right sort
should not do as well as anyone else. But this was not the other's point
of view.

"No, no. Place runs itself. Nothing can stop it now. Good enough for a
lord," he growled in short sentences. "Look at the changes in our time.
We need a lord here now. They have got a lord in Bombay."

He dined once or twice every year at the Government House--a
many-windowed, arcaded palace upon a hill laid out in roads and gardens.
And lately he had been taking about a duke in his Master-Attendant's
steam-launch to visit the harbor improvements. Before that he had "most
obligingly" gone out in person to pick out a good berth for the ducal
yacht. Afterwards he had an invitation to lunch on board. The duchess
herself lunched with them. A big woman with a red face. Complexion quite
sunburnt. He should think ruined. Very gracious manners. They were going
on to Japan. . . .

He ejaculated these details for Captain Whalley's edification, pausing
to blow out his cheeks as if with a pent-up sense of importance, and
repeatedly protruding his thick lips till the blunt crimson end of his
nose seemed to dip into the milk of his mustache. The place ran itself;
it was fit for any lord; it gave no trouble except in its Marine
department--in its Marine department he repeated twice, and after
a heavy snort began to relate how the other day her Majesty's
Consul-General in French Cochin-China had cabled to him--in his official
capacity--asking for a qualified man to be sent over to take charge of a