"He keeps his old office."
"And Mr. Finn?"
"I believe so; but in what place I don't know."
"And who else?"
"Our old friend the Duke, and Lord Cantrip, and Mr. Wilson,—and Sir Gregory will be Lord Chancellor."
"Just the old stupid Liberal team. Put their names in a bag and shake them, and you can always get a ministry. Well, Plantagenet;—I'll go anywhere you like to take me. I'll have something for the malaria at Rome, and something for the mosquitoes in Norway, and will make the best of it. But I don't see why you should run away in the middle of the Session. I would stay and pitch into them, all round, like a true ex-minister and independent member of Parliament." Then as he was leaving her she fired a last shot. "I hope you made Sir Orlando and Sir Timothy peers before you gave up."
It was not till two days after this that she read in one of the daily papers that Sir Timothy Beeswax was to be Attorney-General, and then her patience almost deserted her. To tell the truth, her husband had not dared to mention the appointment when he first saw her after hearing it. Her explosion first fell on the head of Phineas Finn, whom she found at home with his wife, deploring the necessity which had fallen upon him of filling the fainéant office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. "Mr. Finn," she said, "I congratulate you on your colleagues."
"Your Grace is very good. I was at any rate introduced to many of them under the Duke's auspices."
"And ought, I think, to have seen enough of them to be ashamed of them. Such a regiment to march through Coventry with!"
"I do not doubt that we shall be good enough men for any enemies we may meet."