Page:Framley Parsonage.djvu/361

Rh that the giants were going to the country. It was manifest that the giants had not a majority in Parliament, generous as had been the promises of support disinterestedly made to them by the gods. This indeed was manifest, and therefore they were going to the country, although they had been deliberately warned by a very prominent scion of Olympus that if they did go that disinterested support must be withdrawn. This threat did not seem to weigh much, and by two o'clock on the day following Miss Dunstable's party the fiat was presumed to have gone forth. The rumor had begun with Tom Towers, but by that time it had reached Buggins at the Petty Bag Office.

"It won't make no difference to hus, sir; will it, Mr. Robarts?" said Buggins, as he leaned respectfully against the wall near the door, in the room of the private secretary at that establishment.

A good deal of conversation, miscellaneous, special, and political, went on between young Robarts and Buggins in the course of the day, as was natural, seeing that they were thrown in these evil times very much upon each other. The Lord Petty Bag of the present ministry was not such a one as Harold Smith. He was a giant indifferent to his private notes, and careless as to the duties even of patronage; he rarely visited the office, and as there were no other clerks in the establishment—owing to a root and branch reform carried out in the short reign of Harold Smith—to whom could young Robarts talk, if not to Buggins?

"No, I suppose not," said Robarts, as he completed on his blotting-paper an elaborate picture of a Turk seated on his divan.

"'Cause, you see, sir, we're in the Upper 'Ouse now, as I always thinks we hought to be. I don't think it ain't constitutional for the Petty Bag to be in the Commons, Mr. Robarts. Hany ways, it never usen't."

"They're changing all those sort of things nowadays, Buggins," said Robarts, giving the final touch to the Turk's smoke.

"Well, I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Robarts, I think I'll go. I can't stand all these changes. I'm turned of sixty now, and don't want any 'stifflicates. I think I'll take my pension and walk. The hoffice ain't the same place at all since it come down among the Commons." And then