By the time questions were over, following on the prelude of private business, the evening was getting on.  Members evidently tired out; had crowded in to vote on the Pump-handle question; sat in serried rows during the squabbles of question-time; and as soon as business was actually reached, House swiftly emptied, leaving about a score of Members.  TIME more than ever distracted. Mr. P. increasingly perky.

“Ho! ho!” he said, rubbing his hands, “I don’t wonder at this Star going to the Dogs.  Stop till you come over to Westminster, TIME, dear boy, and we’ll show you how public business should be carried on.”

[Illustration]

Explain to them that House is now in Committee on a Bill that had at earlier stages occupied some months of the Session, practically the greater portion of its working time.  Now Session drawing to a close; agreed on both sides that it is too late to conclude Bill this Session; will be dropped after another night or two; Members knowing this, do not think it worth while to give up more time to Bill.  Next Session it will be brought in again, and if the Government have better luck, and get earlier stages through in less time, there will be a chance of it passing.

“What!” shrieked TIME, forgetting where he was, “you don’t mean to say that after devoting nearly a whole Session to a measure, laboriously shaping it up to a certain stage, you chuck away all your work because the Almanack says it’s August?  Why don’t you, when you meet again in February, take the Bill up at the stage you dropped it?  Why don’t you—­”

Here our friend’s observations were brought to a sudden close.  TIME was, as Mr. P. subsequently remarked, reduced to the status of a half-Timer.  Angry cries of “Order!  Order!” broke in on his unpremeditated speech.  Two attendants, approaching him on either flank, seized him, and led him forth under the personal direction of the Sergeant-at-Arms. Mr. P., following his friend, and endeavouring from the top of the staircase to assure him that, “we manage these things better at Westminster,” was promptly taken into custody, and led forth beyond the precincts, a combination of circumstances that interrupted and, indeed, as far as my friends were concerned, finally closed what was beginning to promise to prove an agreeable and instructive evening.

Business Done.—­Mr. Punch and another Stranger expelled from the Gallery, and TOBY’s narrative completed.

* * * * *

VISIT TO VENUS.

[Illustration]

The two Travellers made their way through space in silence, but on a sudden Father TIME plucked his conductor by the sleeve, and spoke.

“Sir,” he said, “I perceive in the distance a wonderful light, and there is a sound of soft and beautiful music that attracts me strangely.  Shall we approach the light, and listen more closely to these strains?”