"Don't ask us to fetch your man out for you, that's all," said the very great man.
And for an instant Lord Semingham, still feeling that load upon his shoulders, fancied that it would be far from his heart to prefer such a request. There might be things less just and fitting than that Willie Ruston and those savage tribes of Omofaga should be left to fight out the quarrel by themselves, the civilised world standing aloof. And the dividends—well, of course, there were the dividends, but Lord Semingham had in his haste forgotten them.
"Ah, you don't know Ruston," said he, shaking a forefinger at the great man.
"Don't I? He came every day to my office for a fortnight."
"Wanted something?"
"Yes, he wanted something certainly, or he wouldn't have come, you know."
"Got it, I suppose?" asked Lord Semingham, in a tone curiously indicative of resignation rather than triumph.
"Well, yes; I did, at last, not without hesitation, accede to his request."
Then Lord Semingham, with no apparent excuse, laughed in the face of the great man, left the House (much in the same sudden way as he had left Queen Street, Cheapside), and passed rapidly through the lobbies till he reached Westminster Hall. Here he met a young man, clad to perfection, but looking sad. It was Evan Haselden. With a sigh of relief at meeting no one of heavier metal, Semingham stopped him and began to talk. Evan's melancholy air enveloped his answers in a mist of gloom. Moreover there was a large streak on his hat, where the nap had been rubbed the wrong way; evidently he was in trouble. Presently he seized his friend by the arm, and proposed a walk in the Park.
"But are you paired?" asked Semingham; for an important division was to occur that day in the Commons.