“Take this card in to Mr. Balfour, Mr. Wells,” said he to the butler, who was an old acquaintance, “and say I want one minute in private with him,—strictly private, mind. I 'll step into the library here and wait.”
“What's up, Sewell? Are you in a new scrape, eh?” said Balfour, entering, slightly flushed with wine and conversation, and half put out by the interruption.
“Not much of a scrape,—can you give me five minutes?”
“Wells said one minute, and that's why I came. The Castledowns and Eyres and the Ashes are here, and the Langrish girls, and Dick Upton.”
“A very choice company, for robbing you of which even for a moment I owe every apology, but still my excuse is a good one. Are you as anxious to promote your Solicitor-General as you were a week or two ago?”
“If you mean Pemberton, I wish he was—on the Bench, or in Abraham's bosom—I don't much care which, for he is the most confounded bore in Christendom. Do you come to tell me that you'll poison him?”
“No; but I can promote him.”
“Why—how—in what way?”
“I told you a few days ago that I could manage to make the old man give in his resignation; that it required some tact and address, and especially the absence of everything like menace or compulsion.”
“Well, well, well—have you done it—is it a fact?”