You are just the sort of man who will succeed with the House. What I doubt is, whether you will do as well in office."

"I wish I might have the chance."

"Of course you can have the chance if you try for it. Beginning so early, and being on the right side,—and, if you will allow me to say so, among the right set,—there can be no doubt that you may take office if you will. But I am not sure that you will be tractable. You cannot begin, you know, by being Prime Minister."

"I have seen enough to realise that already," said Phineas.

"If you will only keep that little fact steadily before your eyes, there is nothing you may not reach in official life. But Pitt was Prime Minister at four-and-twenty, and that precedent has ruined half our young politicians."

"It has not affected me, Lady Laura."

"As far as I can see, there is no great difficulty in government. A man must learn to have words at command when he is on his legs in the House of Commons, in the same way as he would if he were talking to his own servants. He must keep his temper; and he must be very patient. As far as I have seen Cabinet Ministers, they are not more clever than other people."

"I think there are generally one or two men of ability in the Cabinet."

"Yes, of fair ability. Mr. Mildmay is a good specimen. There is not, and never was, anything brilliant in him. He is not eloquent, nor, as far as I am aware, did he ever create anything. But he has always been a steady, honest, persevering man, and circumstances have made politics come easy to him."

"Think of the momentous questions which he has been called upon to decide," said Phineas.

"Every question so handled by him has been decided rightly according to his own party, and wrongly according to the party opposite. A political leader is so sure of support and so sure of attack, that it is hardly necessary for him to be even anxious to be right. For the country's sake, he should have officials under him who know the routine of business."

"You think very badly then of politics as a profession."

"No; I think of them very highly. It must be better to deal with the repeal of laws than the defending of criminals. But all this is papa's wisdom, not mine. Papa has never been in the Cabinet yet, and therefore of course he is a little caustic."

"I think he was quite right," said Barrington Erle stoutly. He spoke so stoutly that everybody at the table listened to him.

"I don't exactly see the necessity for such internecine war just at present," said Lord Brentford.

"I must say I do," said the other. "Lord de Terrier took office knowing that he was in a minority. We had a fair majority of nearly thirty when he came in."

"Then how very soft you must have been to go out," said Miss Fitzgibbon.

"Not in the least soft," continued Barrington Erle. "We could not command our men, and were bound to go out. For aught we knew, some score of them might have chosen to support Lord de Terrier, and then we should have owned ourselves beaten for the time."

"You were beaten,—hollow," said Miss Fitzgibbon.

"Then why did Lord de Terrier dissolve?"

"A Prime Minister is quite right to dissolve in such a position," said Lord Brentford. "He must do so for the Queen's sake. It is his only chance."

"Just so. It is, as you say, his only chance, and it is his right. His very possession of power will give him near a score of votes, and if he thinks that he has a chance, let him try it. We maintain that he had no chance, and that he must have known that he had none;—that if he could not get on with the late House, he certainly could not get on with a new House. We let him have his own way as far as we could in February.