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He had spent some weeks with his old master in his retirement without once adverting to his own difficulties, still hoping that on his return to town a promise would be fulfilled, which Lord Skreene had given him, that "the affair should in his absence be settled to his satisfaction."
It was said that this appointment was made in consequence of the new colonel being a nephew of Lord Skreene, and of his also having it in his power to command two votes in parliament. For the truth of this story we cannot pretend to vouch.
The place at court, as he was by this post informed by a private, very confidential letter, under a government cover and huge seal, from his intimate friend, my Lord Skreene, ministers had found themselves under the unfortunate necessity of giving away, to secure three votes on a certain cabinet question.
The list was the same as that on which the commissioner formerly went to work, except that the name of the Duke of Greenwich had been struck out, and two others added in his place, so that it stood thus: "Dukes of Doncaster and Stratford; Lords Coleman, Naresby, Skreene, Twisselton, Waltham, Wrexfield, Chelsea, and Lancaster; Sir Thomas Cope, Sir James Skipworth; Secretaries Arnold and Oldfield."
They were going to look for a cousin of this man, so they told Skreene, and besides that, intended to go to a tavern to buy a bottle of rum: all of which Skreene gives the Council to understand he verily believed to be the real object of their visit.
Apparently without fear of committing himself, he said at once that it was a very extraordinary proceeding that he could no way account for it, but by supposing that the lieutenant-colonel in question had, through his relation, Lord Skreene, influenced his Grace of Greenwich, and that Lord Oldborough could not, in the present conjuncture, make any movement in direct opposition to the duke.
He had gone through, in compliance with the advice of his friends, the mortification of reiterating vain memorials and applications to the Duke of Greenwich, Lord Skrimpshire, Lord Skreene, and Mr. Secretary Cope. The only thing which Mr. Temple refused to do, was to implicate Lord Oldborough, or to disturb him on the subject.
Presently Skreene came hurrying down to tell her that the boat was coming, and, what surprised him, there were four persons in it. "Who is this fourth man?" he asked her, with his habitual simplicity, "and how are we to get him back to the shore again?" a very natural question for Roger to ask, after all that had passed in his presence! Mrs.
The subsidy was remitted the next day, though at the expense of a service of plate which Lord Skreene had bespoken for his mistress, and though Secretary Cope was compelled to sell at some disadvantage a few of the very few remaining acres of his paternal estate, to make good what had been borrowed from the secret service money.
He had found a man exactly to his hand in a certain Roger Skreene, whose name might almost be thought to be adopted for the occasion and to express the part he had to act. He was what we may call the sloop's husband, but was bound to do whatever Murray commanded, to ask no questions, and to be profoundly ignorant of the real objects of the expedition.
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