Thus was destroyed, let us hope for ever, what was rapidly growing to be a formidable legend and one that would have undermined the security of the State and the honour of our public life in the eyes of rival nations.
It was not the least of the services which Charles Repton had rendered to the State, and as we raise our grateful hats to Providence for the recovery that made his action possible, let us not forget the genius of the Young Canadian Doctor who was the author of that miraculous moment in a story of a thousand years.
The Private Members’ time was ended. The House sat on upon the Broadening of the Streets Bill, the intense unpopularity of which rendered it especially urgent.
When the House of Commons rose, near midnight, Dolly and Dimmy went out together by the door of the private rooms into the cool air and there in the courtyard were the glowing lamps of Mary’s motor car. She beckoned them and they got in.
“You got to come to supper to-night,” she said mysteriously. “They’ll all be there.”
Dimmy was agreeable. Dolly tried to plead something but she shut him up, and after them in single file raced through London half a dozen taxis and cars and broughams all making in a stream for St. James’s.
It made such a supper-party as Mary Smith alone in London could gather!
Her sister-in-law, with the Leader of the Opposition, and his brother; his right-hand man who had been Chancellor in the last administration; his nephew, the Postmaster General; Dolly himself; Dolly’s brother-in-law, the Secretary for India; his little nephew’s wife’s cousin at the Board of Trade, and his stepmother’s brother at the Admiralty, sat down,—and so did Dimmy, who was there without his wife, and also, I regret to say, without a stud, or rather without the head of a stud, in his shirt; for somehow it had broken off.
But the reader will have but an imperfect picture of that jolly table if she imagines that it was a mere family party.