inking of things for the next hour in his chair, succeeded
only in proving to himself that Lord Brock never ought to have been
Prime Minister of England after having ventured to make so poor a
joke on so solemn a subject.

CHAPTER VIII

The Beginning of a New Career

By the time that the Easter holidays were over,--holidays which had
been used so conveniently for the making of a new government,--the
work of getting a team together had been accomplished by the united
energy of the two dukes and other friends. The filling up of the
great places had been by no means so difficult or so tedious,--nor
indeed the cause of half so many heartburns,--as the completion of
the list of the subordinates. _Noblesse oblige._ The Secretaries of
State, and the Chancellors, and the First Lords, selected from this
or the other party, felt that the eyes of mankind were upon them, and
that it behoved them to assume a virtue if they had it not. They were
habitually indifferent to self-exaltation, and allowed themselves
to be thrust into this or that unfitting role, professing that the
Queen's Government and the good of the country were their only
considerations. Lord Thrift made way for Sir Orlando Drought at the
Admiralty, because it was felt on all sides that Sir Orlando could
not join the new composite party without high place. And the same
grace was shown in regard to Lord Drummond, who remained at the
Colonies, keeping the office to which he had been lately transferred
under Mr. Daubeny. And Sir Gregory Grogram said not a word, whatever
he may have thought, when he was told that Mr. Daubeny's Lord
Chancellor, Lord Ramsden, was to keep the seals. Sir Gregory did,
no doubt, think very much about it; for legal offices have a
signification differing much from that which attaches itself to
places simply political. A Lord Chancellor becomes a peer, and on
going out of office enjoys a large pension. When the woolsack has
been reached there comes an end of doubt, and a beginning of ease.
Sir Gregory was not a young man, and this was a terrible blow. But he
bore it manfully, saying not a word when the Duke spoke to him; but
he became convinced from that moment that no more inefficient lawyer
ever sat upon the English bench, or a more presumptuous politician in
the British Parliament, than Lord Ramsden.

The real struggle, however, lay in the appropriate distribution of
the Rattlers and the Robys, the Fitzgibbons and the Macphersons a