The sun umbrella marked a precedent. It was a symbol, a herald of the President's ever advancing social status. All the same it was not allowed to mar a certain large geniality with which he always bore himself at the Rose Show. By nature the proprietor of the Duke of Wellington was not an expansive man, particularly in the world of affairs, but once a year, at least, he made a point of unbending as far as it was in him to do so.
This afternoon the President was accessible to all and sundry as of yore. Moreover he had followed his time-honored custom of regaling the committee, most of whom were "substantial men" and the cronies of an earlier, more primitive phase in the ascending fortunes of the future mayor of the city, with whisky and cigars, conveyed specially from the Duke of Wellington by George the head barman. But it was clear as the afternoon advanced and the heat increased with the ever-growing throng, that the subject of roses and even the martial strains of Rule Britannia, Hearts of Oak and other accepted masterpieces rendered with amazing _brio_ by the B.P.B.B. did not wholly occupy the thoughts of these distinguished men.
Among the Olympians who sat in the magic semicircle at the mouth of their own private tent and enjoyed the President's whisky and cigars and the privilege of personal intercourse with him was a foxy-looking man with large ears and large spectacles. Julius Weiss by name, he had migrated from his native Germany thirty years before, and by specializing in what was technically known as "a threepenny hair-cut" had risen to the position of a master hair-dresser with six shops of his own in the city. A man of keen intelligence and cosmopolitan outlook, there were times in the course of the afternoon when he seemed to claim more of the President's attention than the ostensible business in hand.
"No, I don't trust our gov'ment," said Josiah for the tenth time, when a cornet solo, the Battle of Prague ("Bandsman Rosher") had been brought to a triumphant close. "Never have trusted 'em if it comes to that."
"That's because you're a blooming Tory," ventured the only hungry looking member of an extremely well-nourished looking committee--an obvious intellectual with piercing black eyes and fiercely picturesque mustache whose hue was as the raven.