“Bless us all!” cried ROWNTREE, looking on with blank amazement, “MAKINS evidently thinks that JONAH swallowed the whale.”  Bill seemed to shatter friendships and dissever old alliances.  SQUIRE of MALWOOD naturally at home in the fray, but rather startling to find HOME SECRETARY running amuck at CHAMBERLAIN.  MATTHEWS in his most hoity-toity mood; quivered with indignation; thumped the table; shook a forensic forefinger at the undesignedly offending JOSEPH, and, generally, went on the rampage.  As for HENEAGE, he filled up any little pause in uproar by diving in and moving the Closure.  Once, whilst GEDGE was opposing an Amendment hostile to Bill, HENEAGE dashed in with his Closure motion.  GEDGE’s face a study; mingled surprise, indignation, and ineffable regret mantled his mobile front.

[Illustration:  “Bless us all!”]

“To think,” he said afterwards, “that just when I was coming to HENEAGE’s help with an argument founded on profound study and pointed with legal lore, he should suddenly jump up, lower his head, and, as it were, butt me in the stomach with the Closure.  It is more than I can at the moment comprehend.”

GEDGE so flurried that when Members returned, after Division on Closure, he being, in accordance with the rule, seated and wearing his hat, wanted to argue out the question with COURTNEY.

“I submit, Sir,” he said, “that the Hon. Member, in moving the Closure, controverted Rule 186.”

The Chairman:  “I think the Hon. Member can scarcely have read the Rule.”

Mr. GEDGE:  “I have read the Rule, Sir.  This is what it says—­”

Chairman:  “Order!  Order!” and GEDGE subsided.

Then TOMLINSON fortuitously turning up on Treasury Bench, joined in conversation.  But COURTNEY turned upon him with such a thunderous cry of “Order!  Order!” that TOMLINSON visibly shrivelled up, and his sentence, like the unfinished window in ALLADIN’s Tower, unfinished must remain.

Wrangling went on till a quarter past five, when TALBOT interposed, and with most funereal manner moved to report progress.  HENEAGE almost mechanically lowered his head and had started to butt at TALBOT as he had upset GEDGE when he was providentially stopped and convinced that further struggle with obstruction was hopeless.  So, Clause I. agreed to, Bill talked out.  MAKINS, growing increasingly delightful, protested that a Bill that had been fifty years before the country, was not to be rushed through the House on a Wednesday afternoon. Argal, the more familiar the House is with the details of a measure, the more necessary is it to debate it.

Business done.—­Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister.  Banns again objected to.

Saturday, 1:25 A M.—­Land Bill just through report stage.  Nothing left now but Third Reading.  “Well, KNOX,” said WINDBAG SEXTON, “that will be our last opportunity, and we must make the most of it.  In meantime I think we’ve done pretty well.  I’m especially pleased with you.  You’re a boy of great promise.  If anything happened to me—­a stray tack in the bench, or a pin maliciously directed, and the wind-bag were to collapse—­you’d do capitally, till I got it repaired.”