Old Parliamentary hands turned to look at their new colleague. His further breach of order was done with perfect manner. There was no shouting vulgarity about his interruption, but a definite purpose, pleasantly expressed. They rapidly summed him up. He was well-looking, well-dressed, good House-of-Commons form, yet with a refreshing look of determination in his eyes. Far within themselves the veterans began to admire and to wonder. Geoffrey's début, they felt, was full of promise; it marked a man of the future as surely as the Hartington yawn had done.
"He will do," they said; "impudence and brains." That was their verdict in the beginning. Shrewd were those front-benchers, but they did not quite know Geoffrey.
"May I apologize, Mr. Speaker, and explain----"
"I decline to give way," declared the important person whose pomposity and portentous drivel had provoked the elves' interruption.
"'Vide! 'vide!" cried a Labour man, merely in mischief.
June kissed the Speaker. Without blushing, yet with perfect grace and modesty, in the interests of true progress, she kissed him; while Bim, lying full length along the top of his wig, pressed the wand against his forehead, and willed him to do as the fairies required. Could any man successfully resist such powers? No! Even the first of Commoners could not.
The Speaker, as he stood waiting to deliver judgment, knew he was, though dazed through the brightness, even clearer-headed than usual. He was on the awesome edge of a precedent. He wondered how the decision then to be given would be received; ordinarily it would have filled the House with amazement, but the earlier inoculation with magic had already begun to take effect. The Speaker was aware of strange powers and presences about him.
The person of pompous prose, realizing that his dignity was endangered, again cried a protest; but he was so far away from the sympathies of his fellow-members--he had bored them so severely--that with clamour they shouted him down. Thanks to the fairies, every single member in that House hurled "Order!" at him.
Though technically quite in order, he was forced to subside. He felt badly treated; he was badly treated: and serve him jolly well right!
During the whole of the subsequent scene--a glorious page in the new English history--the nonentity sulked. Bim after a while went to sit on his knee, endeavouring to charge him with the elixir of elfdom; but it was difficult, at that stage of chronic self-esteem, for any good influence to pierce the crust of prejudice, jealousy, and indignation which bound him.