The Warden entered at this moment: and close behind him came the Lord Chancellor, a little flushed and out of breath, and adjusting his wig, which appeared to have been dragged partly off his head.
“But where is my precious child?” my Lady enquired, as the four took their seats at the small side-table devoted to ledgers and bundles and bills.
“He left the room a few minutes ago with the Lord Chancellor,” the Sub-Warden briefly explained.
“Ah!” said my Lady, graciously smiling on that high official. “Your Lordship has a very taking way with children! I doubt if any one could gain the ear of my darling Uggug so quickly as you can!” For an entirely stupid woman, my Lady's remarks were curiously full of meaning, of which she herself was wholly unconscious.
The Chancellor bowed, but with a very uneasy air. “I think the Warden was about to speak,” he remarked, evidently anxious to change the subject.
But my Lady would not be checked. “He is a clever boy,” she continued with enthusiasm, “but he needs a man like your Lordship to draw him out!”
The Chancellor bit his lip, and was silent. He evidently feared that, stupid as she looked, she understood what she said this time, and was having a joke at his expense. He might have spared himself all anxiety: whatever accidental meaning her words might have, she herself never meant anything at all.
“It is all settled!” the Warden announced, wasting no time over preliminaries. “The Sub-Wardenship is abolished, and my brother is appointed to act as Vice-Warden whenever I am absent. So, as I am going abroad for a while, he will enter on his new duties at once.”
“And there will really be a Vice after all?” my Lady enquired.
“I hope so!” the Warden smilingly replied.