n: Floored by the Carpet.]

"It's all very well for you," he continues, glowering at JOKIM, "to
complain of your lot; but till you go into the carpet-cleaning line
you never know what vicissitudes mean. One day, alighting from your
four-in-hand, and happily able to spare to Tottenham Court Road a few
moments from direction of national affairs, you look in at your shop;
enter a lady who says she wants a carpet cleaned. 'Very well' you say
rubbing your hands, and smiling blandly; 'and what will be the next
article.' Nothing more. Only this blooming carpet, out of which, when
the job is finished and it is sent home you make a modest five bob.
Your keen insight into figures, JOKIM, will convince you that the coin
colloquially known as five bob won't go far to enable you to cut a
figure in Society, drive four-in-hand, give pic-nics in your park to
the Primrose League, and subscribe to the Canton Fund. However, there
it is; carpet comes; you send it out in usual way, and what happens?
Why it blows itself up, kills two boys, lames a man, and then you
discover that you've been entertaining unawares a carpet worth L1000
which you have to pay. Did that ever happen to you at the Treasury?"
MAPLE-BLUNDELL fiercely demanded. JOKIM forced to admit that his
infinite sorrows had never taken that particular turn.

"Very well, then," snapped MAPLE-BLUNDELL, "don't talk to me about
your troubles. As far as I know this is the only carpet in the world
valued at L1000; it is certainly the only one that ever went off by
spontaneous combustion; and I had this particular carpet in charge, at
the very moment when it was ready to combust spontaneously."

"Yes," said JOKIM, softly, as MAPLE-BLUNDELL went off, viciously
stamping on the carpet that covers the Library floor, "we all have
our troubles, and when I think of MAPLE-BLUNDELL and his combustible
carpet I am able the better to bear the woes I have."

[Illustration: ? ? ?] _Business done._--In Committee on Local
Taxation Bill.

_Thursday._--"True, TOBY," OLD MORALITY said, in reply to an
observation, "I am a little tired, and naturally; things haven't been
going so well as they did; but I could get along well enough if it
wasn't for SUMMERS. CONEYBEARE'S cantankerous; STORY is strenuous;
TANNER tedious; and DILLON denunciatory. But there's something about
SUMMERS that is peculiarly aggravating. In the first place, he is, as
far as appearances go, such a quiet, amiable, inoffensive youn