"When is Mr. Eames going to be back?" Mrs. Thorne said at dinner one day. On this occasion the squire was dining at Mrs. Thorne's house; and there were three or four others there,—among them a Mr. Harold Smith, who was in Parliament, and his wife, and John Eames's especial friend, Sir Raffle Buffle. The question was addressed to the squire, but the squire was slow to answer, and it was taken up by Sir Raffle Buffle.
"He'll be back on the 15th," said the knight, "unless he means to play truant. I hope he won't do that, as his absence has been a terrible inconvenience to me." Then Sir Raffle explained that John Eames was his private secretary, and that Johnny's journey to the Continent had been made with, and could not have been made without, his sanction. "When I came to hear the story, of course I told him that he must go. 'Eames,' I said, 'take the advice of a man who knows the world. Circumstanced as you are, you are bound to go.' And he went."
"Upon my word that was very good-natured of you," said Mrs. Thorne.
"I never keep a fellow to his desk who has really got important business elsewhere," said Sir Raffle. "The country, I say, can afford to do as much as that for her servants. But then I like to know that the business is business. One doesn't choose to be humbugged."
"I daresay you are humbugged, as you call it, very often," said Harold Smith.
"Perhaps so; perhaps I am; perhaps that is the opinion which they have of me at the Treasury. But you were hardly long enough there, Smith, to have learned much about it, I should say."
"I don't suppose I should have known much about it, as you call it, if I had stayed till Doomsday."
"I daresay not; I daresay not. Men who begin as late as you did never know what official life really means. Now I've been at it all my life, and I think I do understand it."
"It's not a profession I should like unless where it's joined with politics," said Harold Smith.
"But then it's apt to be so short," said Sir Raffle Buffle. Now it had happened once in the life of Mr. Harold Smith that he had been in a Ministry, but, unfortunately, that Ministry had gone out almost within a week of the time of Mr. Smith's adhesion. Sir Raffle and Mr. Smith had known each other for many years, and were accustomed to make civil little speeches to each other in society.