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When the ladies retired to the drawing-room after dinner, the Queen said most kindly to the Premier's wife, "I know you are not very strong yet, Lady ; so I beg you will sit down. And, when the Prince comes in, Lady D shall stand in front of you." This device of screening a breach of etiquette by hiding it behind the portly figure of a British Matron always struck me as extremely droll.
She bowed to her brother-in-law gravely and stiffly; her gaze appeared to travel far over the top of the low pony-carriage which contained Daisy Medland. Dick flushed with vexation. True, the Governor's wife did not yet know the Premier's daughter, but she need not have insisted on the fact so ostentatiously. Dick turned to his companion. She was laughing.
"We want to make this Dominion a great empire," said Sir John, as he said good by to Ranald, "and we are going to do it, but you and men like you in the West must do your part." Ranald was much impressed by the premier's grave earnestness. "I will try, Sir John," he said, "and I shall go back feeling thankful that you are going to show us the way."
And with that comprehensive annotation, he adjusted his spectacles, and the Premier's speech in the Cortes began to unwind, syllable by syllable, from under the carpenter's white tobacco-stained mustache: "Gen-tle-men-of-the-Cham-ber! In-re-ply-to-what-the-Hon-o-ra-ble-De-pu-ty-said-yes-ter-day...."
At last some one entered, ushering in a second person. Don Luis recognized Valenglay and the Prefect of Police. "That's it," he thought. "I've got him." He saw this by the sort of vague sympathy perceptible on the old Premier's lean and bony face.
I afterward learned that these were daily offerings, which the king, on awakening from his forenoon slumber, sent to the Watt P'hra Keau. This apparition was the signal for much stir. The Lady Talap started to her feet and fled, and we were left alone with the premier's sister and the slaves in waiting.
Some excuse for the Government may, perhaps, be found in the fact that the Tories would, in all probability, have opposed it, and Lord John was only Minister on sufferance; he could be displaced at any moment Sir Robert Peel pleased, who expressed himself against the reclamation scheme in his speech during the debate on the Premier's "group of measures" for Ireland, but with this exception, Sir Robert gave his full support to those proposals.
To serve in parliament the nation, Sir Ulick read his recantation: At first he joined the patriot throng, But soon perceiving he was wrong, He ratted to the courtier tribe, Bought by a title and a bribe; But how that new found friend to bind, With any oath of any kind, Disturb'd the premier's wary mind. "Upon his faith. Upon his word," Oh! that, my friend, is too absurd. "Upon his honour."
He had the ability to achieve a position; he had been the lath painted to look like steel. He had all the externals which the layman associates with victory until he went to the supreme test, which ripped him into slivers of rotten wood. The little Napoleon had been one of the premier's favorite bugaboo examples of stage realism tried out in real life.
The waverers stood in a little group by themselves, talking earnestly in undertones, while men wondered whether the paper would undo what the speech had done, and whether the Premier's words had won a victory, only for his deeds to leap to light and rob it from him again.
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