, 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 difference o