“Administering a dose!” Vaughan laughed, falling into the great man’s humour. “To be sure. But enough of that. Now I think of it, Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, looking at his companion, “I have not had the pleasure of seeing you since—but I need not remind you of the occasion. You’ve had good cause to remember it! Yes, yes,” he went on with voluble complacency—he was walking as well as talking very fast—“I seldom speak without meaning, or interfere without result. I knew well what would come of it. It was not for nothing, Mr. Vaughan, that I got down our Borough List and asked you if you had no thought of entering the House. The spark—and tinder! For there you are in the House!” “Yes,” Vaughan replied, astonished at the coolness with which the other unveiled, and even took credit for, the petty intrigue of six months back. “But——” “But,” Brougham said, taking him up with a quick, laughing glance, “you are not yet on the Treasury Bench? That’s it?” “No, not yet,” Vaughan answered, good-humouredly. “Ah, well, time and patience and Bellamy’s chops, Mr. Vaughan, will carry you far, I am sure.” “It is on that subject—the subject of time—I venture to trouble your lordship.” The Chancellor’s lumpish but singularly mobile features underwent a change. Caught in a complacent, vain humour, he had forgotten a thing which, with Vaughan’s last words, recurred to him. “Yes?” he said, “yes, Mr. Vaughan?” But the timbre of that marvellously flexible voice with which he boasted that he could whisper so as to be heard to the very door of the House of Commons, was changed. “Yes, what is it, pray?” “It is time I require,” Vaughan answered. “And, in fine, I have done some service, yeoman service, my lord, and I think that I ought not to be cast aside by the party in whose interest I was returned, and with whose objects I am in sympathy.” “Cast aside? Tut, tut! What do you mean?” “I am told that though the borough for which I sit will continue to return one member, I shall not have the support of the party in retaining my seat.” “Indeed! Indeed!” Brougham answered, “Is it so? I am sorry to hear that.” “But——” “Very sorry, Mr. Vaughan.” “But, with submission, my lord, it is something more than sorrow I seek,” Vaughan answered, too sore to hide his feelings. “You have owned very candidly that I derived from you the impulse which has carried me so far. Is it unreasonable if I venture to turn to you, when advised to see one of the chiefs of my party?” “Who,” Brougham asked with a quick look, “gave you that advice, Mr. Vaughan?” “Sir Charles Wetherell.” “Um!” the Chancellor replied through pinched lips. And he stood, “they had crossed Piccadilly and Berkeley Square, and had reached the corner of Hill Street, where at No. 5, Brougham lived. “I repeat, my lord,” Vaughan continued, “is it unreasonable if I apply to you in these circumstances, rather——” “Rather than to one of the whips?” Brougham said drily. “Yes.”