“You must find the fatigues of Parliament very great,” said my mother.
“Herculean, madam. My correspondence, before I go down to the House at all, is a herculean task, and one in which I am very considerably aided by my daughter.”
“Oh! yes,” she laughed; “I can write such diplomatic letters as ‘I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication of the blank instant, which shall have my very best attention.’ Papa’s constituents invariably hear from me in that exact phraseology by return of post. I have a whole lot of such letters, as the Americans say, ‘on hand.’”
“If it were not for the off-nights, madam,” continued the member for Doodleshire, “Wednesdays and Saturdays, I should seriously think of accepting the Chiltern Hundreds, which is a gentlemanlike way of resigning a seat in the House.”
“And on the off-nights poor papa devotes himself to me,” exclaimed Mabel; “and I always accept invitations for those nights, so the only chance he has for sleep is during the recess.”
I wondered who her friends might be, what they were like, where they resided, and if the men were all in love with her. She had upon three distinct occasions referred to a Mr. Melton, and somehow the mention of this man filled me with a grim foreboding.
“We take too much sleep. We should do with as little as possible, and divide that by three. Sleep is waste of time. Sleep is a sad nuisance, a bore. It is born in a yawn and dies in imbecility,” cried Harry, suddenly bursting into vitality.
“Is it thus you would designate Nature’s soft nurse, sir?” demanded Mr. Hawthorne in a severe tone.
“This comes very badly from Mr. Welstone,” said my mother, “who requires to be called about ten times before he will deign to leave off sleeping.”
“You should see the panels of his door—actually worn away with knuckle-knocking,” I added.