vivid and circumstantial dream, of which, however, we have now
heard quite enough."

There are few things more annoying than to find one's positive
convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatience
at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the
civil sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable of all,
however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin
Somers's mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious gleam in
the eyes of the under-secretary. The man was evidently puzzled and
somewhat alarmed. His looks seemed furtively to interrogate me.
Who was I? What did I want? Why had I come there to do him an ill
turn with his empoyers? What was it to me whether or no he was
absent without leave?

Seeing all this, and perhaps more irritated by it than the thing
deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for
a moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.

"Better let the thing drop," he whispered. "The chairman's right
enough; you dreamed it, and the less said now the better."

I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet
something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that
dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I
requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved
from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the
cigar-case which I had had the honour to place before him at the
commencement of our interview.