at the great man and the first deputy
great man were sitting in the House of Commons at 2 A.M. on that
morning, and that the office generally was driven by the necessity of
things to accommodate itself to Parliamentary exigencies.

Then he was asked his business. How could he explain to a messenger that
his son had been unjustly convicted of bigamy and was now in prison as a
criminal? So he left his card and said that he would call again at two.

At that hour precisely he appeared again and was told that the great man
himself could not see him. Then he nearly boiled over in his wrath,
while the messenger, with all possible courtesy, went on to explain that
one of the deputies was ready to receive him. The deputy was the
Honourable Septimus Brown, of whom it may be said that the Home Office
was so proud that it considered itself to be superior to all other
public offices whatever simply because it possessed Brown. He had been
there for forty years, and for many sessions past had been the salvation
of Parliamentary secretaries and under-secretaries. He was the uncle of
an earl, and the brother-in-law of a duke and a marquis. Not to know
Brown was, at the West End, simply to be unknown. Brooks's was proud of
him; and without him the 'Travellers'' would not have been such a
Travellers' as it is. But Mr. Caldigate, when he was told that Mr.
Brown would see him, almost left the lobby in instant disgust. When he
asked who was Mr. Brown, there came a muttered reply in which
'permanent' was the only word audible to him. He felt that were he to go
away in dudgeon simply because Brown was the name of the man whom he was
called upon to see, he would put himself in the wrong. He would by so
doing close his own mouth against complaint, which, to Mr. Caldigate,
would indeed have been a cutting of his own nose off his own face. With
a scowl, therefore he consented to be taken away to Mr. Brown.

He was, in the first place, somewhat scared by the room into which he
was shown, which was very large and very high. There were two clerks
with Mr. Brown, who vanished, however, as soon as the squire entered the
room. It seemed that Mr. Brown was certainly of some standing in the
office, or he would not have had two arm-chairs and a sofa in his room.
Mr. Caldigate, when he first consented to see Mr. Brown, had expected to
be led into an uncarpeted chamber where there would have been
half-a-dozen other clerks.

'I have your card, Mr. Caldigat