Page:The council of seven.djvu/200

 uttered was digging his own grave? Such passion, such irony, such precision, such cumulative force simply asked for the scrap heap. Dating from the middle of the late war, that thrice blessed upheaval! the scrap heap was where all the Endors had gone. Education, breeding, dedication, were back numbers at Westminster. The country's, the Empire's, government, thank God! was now in the hands of business men. "We believe in the U. P. and we are registered subscribers!" That was the open sesame, just that simple and modest oath of allegiance. It was as easy as swallowing butter.

Some of the honorable members dozed a little in the course of this crack-brained fellow's oratory, others retired to the refreshment room to get a cup of tea. And the few who listened to the strange words, so much out of place within those walls, two or perhaps three of the old hands, hardened æsthetes, not yet quite dead of fatty degeneration of the soul, could not restrain their minds from reverting to the days before the deluge. Bright! Gladstone! Asquith! Grey! Be it so. In the end, every country had the government it really wanted.

Just one there was, among those who deigned to hear John Endor who went even a step farther than these disloyal camp-followers of the U. P. On each side of this magnate on the Treasury Bench was an overdressed but underbred colleague—an ordinance sometimes resorted to by Divine Providence to restore