another. For the rest there were the usual lot from the Front Benches
and the Embassies. Evesham was there, clutching at the lapels of his
coat; and the Prescotts--he with his massive mask of a face, and she
with her quick, hawk-like ways, talking about two things at a time;
old Tommy Strickland, with his monocle and his dropped g's, telling
you what he had once said to Mr. Disraeli; Boubou Seaforth and his
American wife; John Pirram, ardent and elegant, spouting old French
lyrics; and a score of others.

Perkins had got used to them by now. He no longer wondered what
they were "up to," for he knew they were up to nothing whatever. He
reflected, while he was dressing for dinner on Christmas night, how
odd it was he had ever thought of Using them. He might as well have
hoped to Use the Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses that grinned out
in the last stages of refinement at him from the glazed cabinets in
the drawing-rooms.... Or the Labour Members themselves....

True there was Evesham. He had shown an exquisitely open mind about
the whole thing. He had at once grasped the underlying principles,
thrown out some amazingly luminous suggestions. Oh yes, Evesham was a
statesman, right enough. But had even he ever really _believed_ in the
idea of a Provisional Government of England by the Female Foundlings?

To Perkins the whole thing had seemed so simple, so imminent--a thing
that needed only a little general good-will to bring it about. And
now.... Suppose his Bill _had_ passed its Second Reading, suppose it
had become Law, would this poor old England be by way of functioning
decently--after all? Foundlings were sometimes naughty....

What was the matter with the whole human race? He remembered again
those words of Scragson's that had had such a depressing effect on him
at the Cambridge Union--"Look here, you know! It's all a huge nasty
mess, and we're trying to swab it up with a pocket handkerchief."
Well, he'd given up trying to do that....

Sec.2.

During dinner his eyes wandered furtively up and down the endless
ornate table, and he felt he had been, in a sort of way, right in
thinking these people were the handiest instrument to prise open
the national conscience with. The shining red faces of the men, the
shining white necks and arms of the women, the fearless eyes, the
general free-and-easiness and spaciousness, the look of late hours
counteracted by fresh air and exercise and the best things to eat and
dri