he male Private Secretary
part, and it is lamentable to record that no romance has ever occurred
between a male Private Secretary and a female one.

The room is plentifully supplied with House of Commons' stationery, which
disappears at an astonishing rate. This is because the Members come in and
remove it by the gross, knowing full well that the SERJEANT-AT-ARMS will
suspect the Private Secretaries. It is a hard world.

However, this is where the Members come to their Private Secretaries for
instructions. They come there nominally to dictate letters to their
constituents, but really they come to be told what amendments to move and
what questions to ask and what the Drainage Bill is about, and whether they
ought to support the Dentist Qualification (Ireland) (No. 2) Bill, or not.
It is awful to think that if the Private Secretaries downed tools the whole
machinery of Parliament would stop. No questions would be asked and no
amendments moved and no speeches made. The Government would have things all
their own way. Unless, of course, the Government's Private Secretaries
struck too. But of course the Government's Private Secretaries never would,
the dirty blacklegs!

After the Secretaries' Room perhaps the most interesting thing in the two
Houses is the House of Lords sitting as the Supreme Court. Everybody ought
to see that. There is a nice old man sitting in the middle in plain clothes
and several other nice old men in plain clothes sitting about on the
benches, with little card-tables in front of them. Two or three of them
have beards, which is against the best traditions of the Law. But they are
very jolly old men, and now and then one of them sits up and moves his
lips. You can see then that he is putting a sly question to the barrister
who is talking at the counter, though you can't hear anything because they
all whisper. While the barrister is answering, another old man wakes up and
puts a sly question, so as to confuse the barrister. That is the game. The
barrister who gets thoroughly annoyed first loses the case.

They have quite enough to annoy them already. They are all cooped up in a
minute pen about eight feet square. There are eight of them, four K.C.'s
and four underlings. They have nowhere to put their papers and nowhere to
stretch their legs. They sit there getting cramp, or they stand at the
counter talking to the old men. In either position they grow more and more
annoyed. Four of them are famous men,