Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/78

 "Why, of course there is, you silly goose," says I.

"And you never meant that the Captain should be hurt, my lady?"

"I would not have hurt him for the world," says I. "Now, dry your eyes, my girl. The Government hath no more of a case against me than it hath against the Pope of Rome. And even if it had, it is too well bred to dare to prefer it against Bab Gossiter; besides, it is not as though there was any malice in the thing. And as you say, a prisoner more or a prisoner less doth matter not a little bit."

"But," says the foolish Emblem, weeping more than ever, "my lord is very much concerned at the Captain's disposition. Why, my lady, I heard him say not an hour ago that there is nothing to be done, and that the consequences must be faced."

"Consequences!" laughed I. "That comes of being a politician. Oh, these statesmen and prime ministers, with their grave faces. Why, if a chairman so much as puts his foot on a poodle dog in Mincing Lane, they talk of it in whispers and discuss its bearing on what they call the 'situation.' Or if a washerwoman presents her husband with a pair of healthy twins at Charing there's a meeting of the Council to see whether that fact hath altered the aspect of affairs. And it's the nation this, and the nation that; and they talk as mysterious as Jesuits with their interminable Whigs and their pestilential Tories whom nobody understands and