The deputation to urge improved communications within the Empire had few points of contact with the great world, but its members were drawn into engagements of their own, more, indeed, than some of them could conveniently overtake.  Mr Bates never saw his niece in the post-office, and regrets it to this day.  The engagements arose partly out of business relations.  Poulton who was a dyspeptic, complained that nothing could be got through in London without eating and drinking; for his part he would concede a point any time not to eat and drink, but you could not do it; you just had to suffer.  Poulton was a principal in one of the railway companies that were competing to open up the country south of Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific, but having dealt with that circumstance in the course of the day he desired only to be allowed to go to bed on bread and butter and a little stewed fruit.  Bates, whose name was a nightmare to every other dry-goods man in Toronto, naturally had to see a good many of the wholesale people; he, too, complained of the number of courses and the variety of the wines, but only to disguise his gratification.  McGill, of the Great Bear Line, had big proposals to make in connection with southern railway freights from Liverpool; and Cameron, for private reasons of magnitude, proposed to ascertain the real probability of a duty to foreigners on certain forms of manufactured leather—­he turned out in Toronto a very good class of suitcase.  Cruickshank had private connections to which they were all respectful.  Nobody but Cruickshank found it expedient to look up the lost leader of the Canadian House of Commons, contributed to a cause still more completely lost in home politics; nobody but Cruickshank was likely to be asked to dine by a former Governor-General of the Dominion, an invitation which nobody but Cruickshank would be likely to refuse.

“It used to be a ‘command’ in Ottawa,” said Cruickshank, who had got on badly with his sovereign’s representative there, “but here it’s only a privilege.  There’s no business in it, and I haven’t time for pleasure.”

The nobleman in question had, in effect, dropped back into the Lords.  So far as the Empire was concerned, he was in the impressive rearguard, and this was a little company of fighting men.

The entertainments arising out of business were usually on a scale more or less sumptuous.  They took place in big, well-known restaurants, and included a look at many of the people who seem to lend themselves so willingly to the great buzzing show that anybody can pay for in London, their names in the paper in the morning, their faces at Prince’s in the evening, their personalities no doubt advantageously exposed in various places during the day.  But there were others, humbler ones in Earl’s Court Road or Maida Vale, where the members of the deputation had relatives whom it was natural to hunt up.  Long years and many billows had rolled between, and more effective separations had arisen in the whole