"This very afternoon; directly you leave the house."
CHAPTER IV.
IN WHITEHALL.
The Military Munitions' department was one of a dozen or more seated at that period in and about Whitehall. Its ostensible functions, as its title implied, were to supply warlike and other stores to the British army when actively engaged. But as wars had been rare for nearly half-a-century it had done more during that time towards providing a number of worthy gentlemen with comfortable incomes than in ministering to the wants of troops in the field.
It was an office of good traditions: highly respectable, very old-fashioned, slow moving, not to say dilatory, but tenacious of its dignity as regards other departments, and obstinately wedded to its own way of conducting the business of the country.
The most prominent personage in the department for some little time before the outbreak of hostilities with Russia, and during the war, was Mr. Rufus Faulks, brother to the Captain Faulks we met on board the Burlington Castle, and also uncle to Stanislas McKay.
Mr. Faulks had entered the office as a lad, and, after long years of patient service, had worked his way up through all the grades to the very top of the permanent staff. He had no one over him now but the statesman who, for the time being, was responsible for the department in Parliament—a mere politician, perfectly raw in official routine, who had the good taste and better sense to surrender himself blindly to the guidance of Mr. Faulks. What could a bird of passage know of the deep mysteries of procedure it took a life-time to learn?
He was the true type and pattern of a Government official. A prim, plethoric, middle-aged little man; always dressed very carefully; walking on the tips of his toes; speaking precisely, with a priggish, self-satisfied smirk, and giving his opinion, even on the weather, with the air of a man who was secretly better informed than the rest of the world.