"I suppose he put on his gear all in a year or two?"

"There is that look about him, but he's safely over it. Some people
never stop, but I've had to look up at him from the same angle now and
then during the last five years.... It was just a little before that
he happened into--his route like mine--his cub-year in London, then
assistant in Antwerp, then in Dresden. He had Dresden alone for a
year. I've been angling for him some time----"

"Yes," Boylan remarked, "you need the right kind of help to stand up
with _Rhodes_ from this end----"

"You do make it wildly exciting," Lonegan answered gently. "We'll rock
Peter yet."

This chat took place in June. Ten weeks afterward Boylan came in with
the big news, and found Lonegan bending over the following cablegram,
almost the last that came through in the private cipher of _The
States:_

Get Mowbray post with Russians. We are mailing influential matters.
Warsaw key-desk for northern campaigns. We are to be congratulated on
having Lonegan there.

It was from the Old Man, who in certain cases ventured thus to be
expensively felicitous....

"I'm sorry, Lonegan," Boylan said. "I thought you would be taking the
field---"