“What on earth have I to do with that?” he asked, looking up at her, a little put out and evidently unwilling to take any risks. “What is it anyhow?”
“Now look here, Dimmy,” she said, “do be a good fellow: it’s all for your good.”
“Well anyhow,” he said, “I can’t get an answer for two days.”
“Yes you can,” she said, “I’ve sent Dolly a little note typewritten, and signed it in your name; and you can call it a ‘matter of which you have given him private notice.’”
“Oh, you have!” said Demaine, almost moved to energy.
“Yes, I have,” said Mary Smith firmly. “There are a hundred and eight questions to-day; it’s half-past three and you’ve time to get down to the House comfortably. I’ll take you there.”
She did: and amid the general indifference of most members in a crowded House, the amusement of perhaps a couple of dozen, and the red-hot silent rage of at least two, G. M. Demaine in a half-audible voice, mumbled his query.
The Prime Minister received more than a murmur of applause when he answered in his clear and rather high voice that in a matter of such importance and in a moment such as this, it was not to the interest of the country to give a public reply.
If there was one thing George Mulross Demaine dreaded more than another it was to be questioned, and still more to be congratulated, upon things he did not understand. Luckily for him a scene of some violence connected with the religious differences of the Scotch, prevented the immediate opening of the debate at the end of Questions, and he had the opportunity to slip away. But to his terror he found the motor waiting for him and Mary Smith beckoning him from within; like the fascinated bird of the legend he was captured. He hoped that she would drive him to some more congenial air. But no, she produced, from a large and business-like wallet which she only carried in her most imperious moments, two questions to be set down for the day after the morrow.
He took them with a groan and yielded as yield he must to her command that he should set them down. They were of no importance, the one was to his uncle by a second marriage, the First Civil Lord, to ask him the name of a Company that had proved less able than was expected in the manufacture of armour plates; the other to his cousin the Chancellor of the Exchequer asking if the action of some obscure servant of the Treasury in a peaceful Buckinghamshire village had received the attention which his recent services seemed to require.