‘I can hear it up here you know, sir.’

‘Hardly if you are talking to me.’

’To tell the truth it’s a matter I don’t much care about.  They’ve got into some mess as to the number of Judges and what they ought to do.  Finn was saying that they had so arranged that there was one Judge who never could possibly do anything.’

’If Mr Finn said so it would probably be so, with some allowance for Irish exaggeration.  He is a clever man, with less of his country’s hyperbole than others;—­but still not without his share.’

‘You know him well, I suppose.’

‘Yes;—­as one man does know another in the political world.’

’But he is a friend of yours?  I don’t mean an “honourable friend”, which is great bosh; but you know him at home.’

’Oh yes;—­certainly.  He has been staying with me at Matching.  In public life such intimacies come from politics.’

‘You don’t care much about him then.’

The Duke paused a moment before he answered.  ’Yes I do;—­and in what I said just now perhaps I wronged him.  I have been under obligations to Mr Finn,—­in a matter as to which he behaved very well.  I have found him to be a gentleman.  If you come across him in the House I would wish you to be courteous to him.  I have not seen him since we came from abroad.  I have been able to see nobody.  But if ever again I should entertain my friends at my table, Mr Finn would be one who would always be welcome there.’  This he said with a sadly serious air as though wishing that his words should be noted.  At the present moment he was remembering that he owed recompense to Mrs Finn, and was making an effort to pay the debt.  ’But your leader is striking out into unwonted eloquence.  Surely we ought to listen to him.’

Sir Timothy was a fluent speaker, and when there was nothing to be said was possessed of a great plenty of words.  And he was gifted with that peculiar power which enables a man to have the last word in every encounter,—­a power which we are apt to call repartee, with is in truth the readiness which come from continual practice.  You shall meet two men of whom you shall know the one to be endowed with the brilliancy of true genius, and the other to be possessed of but moderate parts, and shall find the former never able to hold his awn against the latter.  In a debate, the man of moderate parts will seem to be greater than the man of genius.  But this skill of tongue, this glibness of speech is hardly an affair of intellect at all.  It is—­as is style to the writer,—­not the wares which he has to take to market, but the vehicle in which they may be carried.  Of what avail to you is it to have filled granaries with corn if you cannot get your corn to the consumer?  Now Sir Timothy was a great vehicle, but he had not in truth much corn to send.  He could turn a laugh against an adversary;—­no man better.  He could seize, at the moment, every advantage which the opportunity might give him.