“Is that the gentleman with whom the police
interfered in the lobby?” Erle inquired.
“A confounded bill discounter to whom our friend
here has introduced me,—for his own purposes,”
said Phineas.
“A very gentleman-like fellow,” said Laurence.
“Barrington knows him, I daresay. Look
here, Finn, my boy, take my advice. Ask him to
breakfast, and let him understand that the house will
always be open to him.” After this Laurence
Fitzgibbon and Barrington Erle got into a cab together,
and were driven away.
A Cabinet Meeting
And now will the Muses assist me while I sing an altogether
new song? On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the
First Lord’s official residence in Downing Street,
and I will attempt to describe what, according to
the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said
or might have been said, what was done or might have
been done, on so august an occasion.
The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself
to have been wrong in his description of things in
general, and is told so, roughly by the critics, and
tenderly by the friends of his bosom. He is moved
to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature
before he tells of them—as should be done
by a strictly honest fictionist. He catches salmon
in October; or shoots his partridges in March.
His dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the
autumn. He opens the opera-houses before Easter,
and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday evening.
And then those terrible meshes of the Law! How
is a fictionist, in these excited days, to create
the needed biting interest without legal difficulties;
and how again is he to steer his little bark clear
of so many rocks,—when the rocks and the
shoals have been purposely arranged to make the taking
of a pilot on board a necessity? As to those
law meshes, a benevolent pilot will, indeed, now and
again give a poor fictionist a helping hand,—not
used, however, generally, with much discretion.
But from whom is any assistance to come in the august
matter of a Cabinet assembly? There can be no
such assistance. No man can tell aught but they
who will tell nothing. But then, again, there
is this safety, that let the story be ever so mistold,—let
the fiction be ever so far removed from the truth,
no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can
convict the narrator of error.
It was a large dingy room, covered with a Turkey carpet,
and containing a dark polished mahogany dinner-table,
on very heavy carved legs, which an old messenger
was preparing at two o’clock in the day for
the use of her Majesty’s Ministers. The
table would have been large enough for fourteen guests,
and along the side further from the fire, there were
placed some six heavy chairs, good comfortable chairs,
stuffed at the back as well as the seat,—but
on the side nearer to the fire the chairs were placed
irregularly; and there were four armchairs,—two
