“Bot more zan you vould, really and truthfully?”

“My dear Baron, you are admitted by all to be an ideal German nobleman.  Therefore you will certainly make an ideal British peer.  You have the true Grand-Seigneur air.  No one would mistake you for anything but a great aristocrat, if they merely saw you in bathing pants; whereas I have something a little different about my manner.  I’m not so impressive—­ not so hall-marked, in fact.”

His friend’s omniscient air and candidly eloquent tone impressed the Baron considerably.  His ingrained conviction of his own importance accorded admirably with these arguments.  His thirst for “life” craved this lion’s share.  His sanguine spirit leaped at the appeal.  Yet his well-regulated conscience could not but state one or two patent objections.

“Bot I have not read so moch of the Tollyvoddles as you.  I do not know ze strings so vell.”

“I have told you nearly everything I know.  You will find the rest here.”

Essington handed him the note-book containing his succinct digest.  In intelligent anticipation of this contingency it was written in his clearest handwriting.

“You should have been a German,” said the Baron admiringly.

He glanced with sparkling eyes at the note-book, and then with a distinctly greater effort the Teutonic conscience advanced another objection.

“Bot you have bought ze kilt, ze Highland hat, ze brogue shoes.”

“I had them made to your measurements.”

The Baron impetuously embraced his thoughtful friend.  Then again his smile died away.

“Bot, Bonker, my voice!  Zey tell me I haf nozing zat you vould call qvite an accent; bot a foreigner—­ one does regognize him, eh?”

“I shall explain that in a sentence.  The romantic tincture of—­well, not quite accent, is a pleasant little piece of affectation adopted by the young bloods about the Court in compliment to the German connections of the Royal family.”

The Baron raised no more objections.

“Bonker, I agree!  Tollyvoddle I shall be, by Jove and all!”

He beamed his satisfaction, and then in an eager voice asked—­

“You haf not ze kilt in zat hat-box?”

Unfortunately, however, the kilt was in the van.

Now the journey, propitiously begun, became more exhilarating, more exciting with each mile flung by.  The Baron, egged on by his friend’s high spirits and his own imagination to anticipate pleasure upon pleasure, watched with rapture the summer landscape whiz past the windows.  Through the flat midlands of England they sped; field after field, hedgerow after hedgerow, trees by the dozen, by the hundred, by the thousand, spinning by in one continuous green vista.  Red brick towns, sluggish rivers, thatched villages and ancient churches dark with yews, the shining web of junctions, and a whisking glimpse of wayside stations leaped towards them, past them, and leagues away behind.  But swiftly as they sped, it was all too slowly for the fresh-created Lord Tulliwuddle.