Thus it was. Lady Frances shook hands; Erb stepped out, looking narrowly through the open gateway of the goods station, and offering assistance to Louisa absently. As he did so, he saw William Henry, his old van boy, marching out of the gates in a violently new suit of corduroys, and with the responsible air of one controlling all the railways in the world. “Get better soon,” said Lady Frances to Louisa. “Mr. Barnes, to-night.” Mr. Danks, down from his seat and closing the door (Erb and his sister standing on the pavement, Erb wondering whether he ought to give the footman threepence for himself, and Louisa coming down slowly from heaven to earth), Mr. Danks received the order, “Home, please.” Erb went half an hour later by tram to Westminster Bridge and walked across. He perceived the necessity for extreme caution; reading and natural wisdom told him that many important schemes had been ruined by the interference of woman. He looked at the lights that starred the borders of the wide river, saw the Terrace where a member of Parliament walked up and down, following the red glow of a cigar, and he knew that if he were ever to get there it would only be by leaping successfully over many obstacles similar to the one which at present confronted him; to allow himself to be distracted from the straight road of progress would be to court disaster. “Boy,” said the porter at the Mansions, “show No. 124A.” In a lift that darted to the skies Erb was conveyed and ordered to wait in a corridor whilst Boy, who wore as many buttons as could be crowded on his tight jacket, went and hunted for Lady Frances’s uncle and presently ran him to earth in the smoking room, bringing him out triumphantly to the corridor. Erb found himself greeted with considerable heartiness, invited to come into the smoking room that looked down at a height suggesting vertigo at St. James’s Park, taken to a corner, and furnished with a big cigar. Men in evening dress, with the self-confidence that comes after an adequate meal, were telling each other what they would do were they Prime Minister, and Erb was surprised to hear the drastic measures proposed for stamping out opposition; some of these seemed to be scarcely within the limits of reason. And what had Erb to say? A plain man, said Lady Frances’s uncle of himself (which, in one respect at any rate, was a statement bearing the indelible stamp of truth), always of opinion that it was well to plunge _in medias res_. On Erb replying that at present he had no remark to offer, the purple-faced Director seemed taken aback, and diverted the conversation for a time to Trichinopolies and how best to keep them, a subject on which Erb was unable to speak with any pretence of authority. “A little whiskey?” suggested the Director, with his thumb on the electric bell, “just to keep one alive.”