"The Minister for Agriculture," I said, desiring to put Gardner at his ease, "would be fully justified in using cauliflowery language."
"Thank you. Then I'll say I go to bed with tuberculosis, and get up with Harry Chaplin. The casual observer is, doubtless, aware that Chaplin has an eye. He sees it gleaming through the eyeglass. I feel it ever upon me. It is no slight thing to have succeeded a statesman of the calibre of Chaplin. But when he persistently sits opposite you, critically observing all your movements with that air of supreme intelligence which more than hints that, as Minister for Agriculture, he was personally acquainted with every one of the cattle on a thousand hills, it is an ordeal that calls into play all the higher faculties of Man. As to the tuberculosis, it is always breaking out in unexpected places; people concerned insist upon regarding me as personally responsible for the visitation."
THE POLITICAL FANCY DRESS BALL AT COVENT GARDEN.
"But," I said, "you have your little holiday, Saturday to Monday, and get out to dinner on off-nights?"
"No," he sighed, "the Minister for Agriculture has no off-nights; and if I go to church at the seaside on a Sunday, the Church-warden in passing round the collection-plate, is sure to steal into my hand a telegram, announcing a fresh outbreak of tuberculosis. As to going out to dinner——"
