"That was the view I took of the matter in regard to Mr. Courtland's attitude when you mentioned it to me at first," said he. "I didn't suppose that he was the man to be broken down because some foolish paper attacks him; but you were emphatic in your denunciation of the injustice that would be liable to be done if--"
"Oh, I had only spoken for about half an hour to Mr. Courtland then," said Phyllis. "I think I know him better now."
"Yes, you have spoken with him for another half hour; you therefore know him twice as well as you did," remarked her father. "I wonder if he admitted to you having done all that he was accused of doing."
He saw in a moment from the little uneasy movement of her eyes that he had made an excellent guess at the general result of the conversation at Mrs. Linton's little lunch. He had not yet succeeded in obtaining any details from his daughter regarding her visit to Ella. She had merely told him that Ella had kept her to lunch, and that Mr. Courtland had been there also.
"Yes. I do believe that he admitted everything," he continued, with a laugh as he thought how clever he was. (He had frequent reasons for laughing that laugh.)
"No," said Phyllis doubtfully; "he did not admit everything."
"There was some reservation? Perhaps it was melinite that he employed for the massacre of the innocents of New Guinea, not dynamite."
"No; it was dynamite. But the natives had stolen it from his steam launch and they exploded it themselves."
Mr. Ayrton lay back in his chair convulsed with laughter.
"And that is the true story of the dynamite massacre?" he cried. "That is how it comes that, in the words of the /Aneroid/, the works of evangelization on Nonconformist principles is likely to be retarded for some time? The missionaries are quite right too. And what about his miracles--they suggested a miracle, didn't they?"
"Oh, that was some foolishness about setting spirits of wine on fire," said Phyllis. "The natives thought that it was water, you know."
Mr. Ayrton laughed more heartily than before.
"That is the crowning infamy," he cried. "My dear Phyllis, it would be quite impossible to allow so delicious a series of missionary muddles to pass unnoticed. I think I see my way clearly in the matter."
She knew that he did. She knew that he regarded most incidents in the political world merely as feeders to his phrase-making capacity. She knew that it would be impossible to repress him now in the matter of Courtland and the missionaries; she fully realized the feelings of Frankenstein.
Only the weakest protest did she make against her father's intended action; and thus when the day came for Mr. Apthomas' question, that gentleman from Wales inquired, "If Her Majesty's Minister for Annexations could give the House any information regarding the so-called explorations of Mr. Herbert Courtland in the island of New Guinea, particularly in respect of a massacre of natives by dynamite in the region of the Fly River; and if it was true that the gentleman just named had permitted himself to be worshiped as a god by the aborigines of another region; and if Her Majesty's Minister for Domestic Affairs was prepared to say that it was legal for one of Her Majesty's subjects to assume the privileges and functions of a god, and if the First Lord of the Treasury was prepared to communicate to the House what course, if any, Her Majesty's government meant to adopt with a view to the prevention of similar outrages in the same region in the future?"
