And very proud the Lord Petty Bag was. For the last three or four months, he and Mr. Supplehouse had been agreeing to consign the ministry to speedy perdition. “This sort of dictatorship will never do,” Harold Smith had himself said, justifying that future vote of his as to want of confidence in the Queen’s government. And Mr. Supplehouse in this matter had fully agreed with him. He was a Juno whose form that wicked old Paris had utterly despised, and he, too, had quite made up his mind as to the lobby in which he would be found when that day of vengeance should arrive. But now things were much altered in Harold Smith’s views. The Premier had shown his wisdom in seeking for new strength where strength ought to be sought, and introducing new blood into the body of his ministry. The people would now feel fresh confidence, and probably the House also. As to Mr. Supplehouse—he would use all his influence on Supplehouse. But, after all, Mr. Supplehouse was not everything. On the morning after our vicar’s arrival in London he attended at the Petty Bag office. It was situated in the close neighbourhood of Downing Street and the higher governmental gods; and though the building itself was not much, seeing that it was shored up on one side, that it bulged out in the front, was foul with smoke, dingy with dirt, and was devoid of any single architectural grace or modern scientific improvement, nevertheless its position gave it a status in the world which made the clerks in the Lord Petty Bag’s office quite respectable in their walk in life. Mark had seen his friend Sowerby on the previous evening, and had then made an appointment with him for the following morning at the new minister’s office. And now he was there a little before his time, in order that he might have a few moments’ chat with his brother. When Mark found himself in the private secretary’s room he was quite astonished to see the change in his brother’s appearance which the change in his official rank had produced. Jack Robarts had been a well-built, straight-legged, lissome young fellow, pleasant to the eye because of his natural advantages, but rather given to a harum-skarum style of gait, and occasionally careless, not to say slovenly, in his dress. But now he was the very pink of perfection. His jaunty frock-coat fitted him to perfection; not a hair of his head was out of place; his waistcoat and trousers were glossy and new, and his umbrella, which stood in the umbrella-stand in the corner, was tight, and neat, and small, and natty. “Well, John, you’ve become quite a great man,” said his brother. “I don’t know much about that,” said John; “but I find that I have an enormous deal of fagging to go through.” “Do you mean work? I thought you had about the easiest berth in the whole Civil Service.”