“The question is that the motion be now put,” guillotines all further speech.  But then he has to put the question, and in the answering words of “Aye” or “No,” there can be put an immense fund of passion.  So it was that night.  The answering “Noes” reached the proportions of a cyclone; you could see men shrieking out the word again and again, almost beside themselves with rage, and with faces positively distorted by the intensity of their feelings.  And the tempest did not end in a moment; again and again the Tories shouted their hoarse and tempestuous, and angry “No, no!”—­the word sometimes repeated like a volley:  “No, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o!”—­this was the noise that rose on the Parliamentary air, and that gave vent to all the passion which had been excited.  And then came the division and a restoration of calm.

[Sidenote:  Charwomen and ratcatchers.]

The Whip is a cunning dog, especially if he be the Whip of the party in power; and you have to be a long time in Parliament before you know all his wiles, and fully appreciate their meaning.  For instance, few innocent outsiders would understand why it is that the Whip always puts down Estimates for a day immediately after the end of a vacation.  The reasons are two.  First, because Estimates give more time and opportunity for the mere bore and obstructive than any other part of Parliamentary business.  On the Estimates, as I have often explained, every single penny spent in the public service has to be entered.  Whether that sum be large or small makes no difference.  For instance, there is a charwoman at the Foreign Office; the charwoman’s salary appears in the accounts just as bold and just as plain as the five thousand a year which the country has to pay for Lord Rosebery—­who is cheap at the money, I must say, lest I be misunderstood.  There is associated with Buckingham Palace a most worthy and useful individual called the ratcatcher.  Everybody can see why in such a vast and generally untenanted barrack, there should be a ratcatcher.  Well, Master Ratcatcher appears on the Estimates for Buckingham Palace just as regularly, as plainly, in as much detail, as my Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Carrington.  There is no reason whatever why a whole evening should not be spent in the discussion of the ratcatcher’s salary.  Perhaps the reader may have heard that, in common with many sobered and middle-aged gentlemen, I have had a pre-historic period when I was accused—­of course, unjustly—­of interfering with the progress of public business.  In that period, I remember very well, the ratcatcher of Buckingham Palace loomed largely, as well as many other strange and portentous figures now vanished into the void and the immensities.  I don’t know whether we were able to keep the Ministry going for a whole night on the subject or not; but still we managed to get some excellent change out of the business.

[Sidenote:  The wistful Whip.]