And thus, after so many and so great adventures, George Mulross Demaine slept once again between sheets, in a bed well aired, in a room with reasonable pictures upon the walls, and reasonable books upon the table, with blankets, with curtains, with pillows, with mahogany tallboys, with three kinds of looking-glasses, with an eider-down quilt, with a deep carpet, with a silver reading lamp, soothed by a complete cleanliness, and, in a word, amid all that the governing classes have very properly secured for themselves during their short pilgrimage through the wilderness of this world.
CHAPTER XIII
ALL through that hot noon and down the beginning of the sun’s decline, George Mulross slept heavily; he slept as in a death, in Parham.
He slept in the house of Carolus Merry Armiger, under the shield and tutelage of William Bailey, eccentric, and with God’s benediction upon him. His troubles were at an end.
Meanwhile in London, the young and popular Prime Minister had received his secretary’s report. The Moon and the Capon were squared.
How squared he was not busy to inquire. Gold and silver he had none—for those purposes at least—that would not be in the best traditions of our public life: but they were squared: Edward assured him they were squared, and there was an end of it.
There was more even than Edward’s assurance, though that was as solid as marble; there were two early copies of the papers themselves which had been ordered and brought to him. The leader of the one dealt with those eternal Concessions in Burma, and he smiled. There was not a word about Repton. The leader of the other was on Fiddlededee, and the Prime Minister experienced an immense relief.