I asked Kauffer unguardedly if no sort of pressure could be brought to bear upon these chaps to make them pay up.

His face beaming with hope and intelligence, he suggested that I should approach the Foreign Office in his behalf; but this I could not quite see my way to.

The coercion of native rulers, I explained, was a difficult and a dangerous art, and to insist, for example, that one of them should recognize his own complexion might be to run up a disproportionate little bill of our own.

I did, however, compound something with Kauffer; I hope it wasn't a felony.

'Look here,' I said to Kauffer, 'this isn't official, you know, in any way, but how would it do to write that scamp Kandore a formal letter regretting that the portrait does not suit him, and asking his permission to dispose of it to me?
Of course it is yours to do as you like with already, but that is no reason why you shouldn't ask.