"There never was a time," said Silomio, "when this country was so isolated among the nations of Europe."
This grand speech echoed through nearly empty House. Prince Arthur and his colleagues on Front Opposition Bench, as usual, paid their distinguished colleague the highest compliment. They knew he would say the right thing in the right way, at the right time. Whilst he kept the gate no traitor could pass, no harm befall a beloved country. So, with one accord, they went off, leaving Casabianca Silomio to tread alone the deck, burning with his eloquence.
On the benches behind sat only Tomlinson, who sometimes wishes Prince Arthur had a little more of Silomio's go; Knatchbull-Hugessen who doesn't think the Knight is quite the model of a country gentleman, but likes to hear him shout at the Government; and Cap'en Tommy Bowles, wearing his best Sunday ducks in honour of a sultry day that reminds him faintly of breathless moments spent in the Forties in the Bight of Benin.
An Authority on Heraldry!
(Mr. Eg-rt-n All-n.)
Silomio sat down and mopped the shining top of his patriotic head with a handkerchief hemmed in Germany. The Cap'en, catching the Chairman's eye with the hook that serves in place of the strong right hand cut off by the flashing blade of the Moor whose felucca Tommy was boarding under the impression it was a ferry-boat, sprang to his feet. "Unthinking diatribes," he called Silomio's noble speech; lamented the effect upon foreign powers of its delivery "by a responsible leader of the party"; and said much else that would have shocked the House had Members chanced to be present. Prince Arthur, who so acutely felt, and so bitterly resented, George Russell's recent sneer at the Patriot Knight, was spared the anguish of the moment by that carefully concerted movement which, happily, calls Silomio's colleagues off the Front Bench when he is about to discourse on Foreign Affairs.
Business done.—Vote on Account agreed to.
Friday.—House met to wind up business previous to Whitsun recess. Alpheus Cleophas, always considerate, been thinking over ways of enjoying the holiday. Struck him nothing would be nicer than free admission for M.P.'s and their friends to witness process of vivisection. Put the matter before Home Secretary in his genial way. Asquith very sorry, but has no power to give the desired admission. Alpheus Cleophas a little depressed, but went off with the consciousness that he had at least done his best.
"There is no enterprise in these people, Toby," he complained. "We in London are much behind the age. We haven't here what in Paris is, I believe, called the Mor-gew: a nice, quiet place to turn into when you are out holiday-making. I have my own resources. When house is shut and I can't go about the basement and cellars smelling out the oil lamps, I sit on edge of fountain in Trafalgar Square and sniff its balmy waters. Everyone not equally independent. If we had only about the parks and in the thoroughfares places open to the respectable public where they might see vivisection going on, we should be a happier nation."