It drives me mad when Herries will wear his hat a little
crooked--habit of looking like a gay dog. Sometime I swear I'll
knock it off. That statue of Britannia over there isn't quite
straight; it sticks forward a bit as if the lady were going to
topple over. The damned thing is that it doesn't topple over and be
done with it. See, it's clamped with an iron prop. Don't be
surprised if I get up in the middle of the night to hike it down."
They paced the path for a few moments in silence and then he
continued. "It's odd those little things seem specially big when
there are bigger things to worry about. We'd better go in and do
some work."
Horne Fisher evidently allowed for all the neurotic possibilities of
Archer and the dissipated habits of Herries; and whatever his faith
in their present firmness, did not unduly tax their time and
attention, even in the case of the Prime Minister. He had got the
consent of the latter finally to the committing of the important
documents, with the orders to the Western armies, to the care of a
less conspicuous and more solid person--an uncle of his named Horne
Hewitt, a rather colorless country squire who had been a good
soldier, and was the military adviser of the committee. He was
charged with expediting the government pledge, along with the
concerted military plans, to the half-mutinous command in the west;
and the still more urgent task of seeing that it did not fall into
the hands of the enemy, who might appear at any moment from the
east.
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