Mr. Cato was very busy all day going through the evidence with the lawyer; and half of every night he spent following the Prince in his swift rambles over the ship, seeing that he did not get into mischief. It was a relief when they landed at last in England.
VII
The first thing Mr. Cato did, when he had settled his guest comfortably at home in Hampstead, under the kindly care of his two sisters, was to go and call on Lord Griffinhoofe, his immediate political leader.
Mr. Cato’s party was divided at this time into many sections. An official leader had at one time been appointed, but in the confusion of politics the party had lost the papers and forgotten his name. The leadership was now divided among a number of eminent men, of whom Lord Griffinhoofe, ex-Cabinet Minister and member of one of the oldest and richest families in England, was not the least. It was generally understood that he would get an important portfolio when a Liberal Government should be formed, and the urbanity of his manner was held to fit him peculiarly for the Foreign Office.
London was out of town when Mr. Cato arrived. The Session was over; but Lord Griffinhoofe was known to have come back on business for a few weeks to his house in Piccadilly. Mr. Cato found the blinds down, and a charwoman washing the steps. He walked in unannounced and entered the well-known reception-room on the ground floor, disguised at present with a furniture of linen bags, enfolding monstrous shapes of large ornaments. Here he found a flushed female, with a bonnet on the side of her head, sitting on one of the long row of leather chairs. She smiled and wagged her feathers and roses at him pleasantly, assuring him that ‘the good gentleman’ would be ‘out in a jiffy.’ Mr. Cato seated himself modestly in a dark corner and waited.
After a little while the inner door opened, and Lord Griffinhoofe himself appeared—a large stout man, with peering short-sighted eyes. He smiled and nodded when he found himself confronted by a curtseying female. Then he cleared his throat, looked in three pockets for his eye-glasses, wiped them, and examined the dirty scrap of paper which he held in his hand.
‘Mrs. Waggs?’ he said.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said the smiling woman in the bonnet; ‘that’s my name, sir, after my dear ’usband who went to the bad.’
‘Well, and what can I do for you?’
‘Mrs. Waggs, my lord, that’s my name. I’ve come to be cook, ’earin’ as you was in want of a temp’ry from my good friend Mrs. ’Amilton, who washes the steps, pore thing, of a Saturday when the other lidy ’as to be at ’ome.’