They could only make
mistakes and stick to them. There is really a certain talent in
unmaking a mistake."
"What do you mean," asked Boyle, "what mistakes?"
"Well, everybody knows it looked like biting off more than he could
chew," replied Horne Fisher. It was a peculiarity of Mr. Fisher that
he always said that everybody knew things which about one person in
two million was ever allowed to hear of. "And it was certainly jolly
lucky that Travers turned up so well in the nick of time. Odd how
often the right thing's been done for us by the second in command,
even when a great man was first in command. Like Colborne at
Waterloo."
"It ought to add a whole province to the Empire," observed the
other.
"Well, I suppose the Zimmernes would have insisted on it as far as
the canal," observed Fisher, thoughtfully, "though everybody knows
adding provinces doesn't always pay much nowadays."
Captain Boyle frowned in a slightly puzzled fashion. Being cloudily
conscious of never having heard of the Zimmernes in his life, he
could only remark, stolidly:
"Well, one can't be a Little Englander."
Horne Fisher smiled, and he had a pleasant smile.
"Every man out here is a Little Englander," he said. "He wishes he
were back in Little England.
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