IN BRIEF AUTHORITY

BY F. ANSTEY

AUTHOR OF "VICE VERSÂ," "A FALLEN IDOL," "THE PARIAH," "THE GIANT'S ROBE," "LYRE AND LANCET," "THE BRASS BOTTLE," "THE TALKING HORSE and Other Tales," "SALTED ALMONDS," ETC.

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1915

[All rights reserved]

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

To
Peggy

AUTHOR'S NOTE

It may be as well to mention here that the whole of this book was planned, and at least three-fourths of it actually written, in those happy days, which now seem so pathetically distant, when we were still at peace—days when, to all but a very few, so hideous a calamity as a World-War seemed a danger that had passed for the present, and might never recur; when even those few could hardly have foreseen that England would be so soon compelled to fight for her very existence against the most efficient and deadly foe it has ever been her lot to encounter.

But, as the central idea of this story happens to be inseparably connected with certain characters and incidents of German origin, I have left them unaltered—partly because it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to substitute any others, but mainly because I cannot bring myself to believe that the nursery friends of our youth could ever be regarded as enemies.

F. ANSTEY.

September 1915.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. "The Skirts of Happy Chance"
CHAPTER II. Rushing to Conclusions
CHAPTER III. Fine Feathers
CHAPTER IV. Crowned Heads
CHAPTER V. Dignity under Difficulties
CHAPTER VI. Cares of State
CHAPTER VII. A Game they did not understand
CHAPTER VIII. "A Steed that knows his Rider"
CHAPTER IX. The Pleasures of the Table
CHAPTER X. The Blonde Beast
CHAPTER XI. A Way Out
CHAPTER XII. Unwelcome Announcements
CHAPTER XIII. What the Pigeon Said
CHAPTER XIV. Bag and Baggage
CHAPTER XV. "Riven With Vain Endeavour"
CHAPTER XVI. "A Cloud that's Dragonish"
CHAPTER XVII. The Reward of Valour
CHAPTER XVIII. A Previous Engagement
CHAPTER XIX. Servants of the Queen
CHAPTER XX. At the End of her Tether
CHAPTER XXI. "Whose Lights are fled, whose Garlands dead"
CHAPTER XXII. Squaring Accounts
EPILOGUE

Works by F. Anstey
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IN BRIEF AUTHORITY

CHAPTER I

"THE SKIRTS OF HAPPY CHANCE"

On a certain afternoon in March Mrs. Sidney Stimpson (or rather Mrs. Sidney Wibberley-Stimpson, as a recent legacy from a distant relative had provided her with an excuse for styling herself) was sitting alone in her drawing-room at "Inglegarth," Gablehurst.

"Inglegarth" was the name she had chosen for the house on coming to live there some years before. What it exactly meant she could not have explained, but it sounded distinguished and out of the common, without being reprehensibly eccentric. Hence the choice.

Some one, she was aware, had just entered the carriage-drive, and after having rung, was now standing under the white "Queen Anne" porch; Mitchell, the rosy-cheeked and still half-trained parlour-maid, was audible in the act of "answering the door."

It being neither a First nor a