“Is that the gentleman with whom the police interfered in the lobby?” Erle inquired.

“A confounded bill discounter to whom our friend here has introduced me,—­for his own purposes,” said Phineas.

“A very gentleman-like fellow,” said Laurence.  “Barrington knows him, I daresay.  Look here, Finn, my boy, take my advice.  Ask him to breakfast, and let him understand that the house will always be open to him.”  After this Laurence Fitzgibbon and Barrington Erle got into a cab together, and were driven away.

CHAPTER XXIX

A Cabinet Meeting

And now will the Muses assist me while I sing an altogether new song?  On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the First Lord’s official residence in Downing Street, and I will attempt to describe what, according to the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said or might have been said, what was done or might have been done, on so august an occasion.

The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself to have been wrong in his description of things in general, and is told so, roughly by the critics, and tenderly by the friends of his bosom.  He is moved to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature before he tells of them—­as should be done by a strictly honest fictionist.  He catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March.  His dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the autumn.  He opens the opera-houses before Easter, and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday evening.  And then those terrible meshes of the Law!  How is a fictionist, in these excited days, to create the needed biting interest without legal difficulties; and how again is he to steer his little bark clear of so many rocks,—­when the rocks and the shoals have been purposely arranged to make the taking of a pilot on board a necessity?  As to those law meshes, a benevolent pilot will, indeed, now and again give a poor fictionist a helping hand,—­not used, however, generally, with much discretion.  But from whom is any assistance to come in the august matter of a Cabinet assembly?  There can be no such assistance.  No man can tell aught but they who will tell nothing.  But then, again, there is this safety, that let the story be ever so mistold,—­let the fiction be ever so far removed from the truth, no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can convict the narrator of error.

It was a large dingy room, covered with a Turkey carpet, and containing a dark polished mahogany dinner-table, on very heavy carved legs, which an old messenger was preparing at two o’clock in the day for the use of her Majesty’s Ministers.  The table would have been large enough for fourteen guests, and along the side further from the fire, there were placed some six heavy chairs, good comfortable chairs, stuffed at the back as well as the seat,—­but on the side nearer to the fire the chairs were placed irregularly; and there were four armchairs,—­two