Tom Towers, it seems, had known all about it, as he always does. The little remark which had dropped from him at Miss Dunstable’s, made, no doubt, after mature deliberation, and with profound political motives, was the forerunner, only by twelve hours, of a very general report that the giants were going to the country. It was manifest that the giants had not a majority in Parliament, generous as had been the promises of support disinterestedly made to them by the gods. This indeed was manifest, and therefore they were going to the country, although they had been deliberately warned by a very prominent scion of Olympus that if they did do so that disinterested support must be withdrawn. This threat did not seem to weigh much, and by two o’clock on the day following Miss Dunstable’s party, the fiat was presumed to have gone forth. The rumour had begun with Tom Towers, but by that time it had reached Buggins at the Petty Bag Office. “It won’t make no difference to hus, sir; will it, Mr. Robarts?” said Buggins, as he leaned respectfully against the wall near the door, in the room of the private secretary at that establishment. A good deal of conversation, miscellaneous, special, and political, went on between young Robarts and Buggins in the course of the day; as was natural, seeing that they were thrown in these evil times very much upon each other. The Lord Petty Bag of the present ministry was not such a one as Harold Smith. He was a giant indifferent to his private notes, and careless as to the duties even of patronage; he rarely visited the office, and as there were no other clerks in the establishment—owing to a root and branch reform carried out in the short reign of Harold Smith—to whom could young Robarts talk, if not to Buggins? “No; I suppose not,” said Robarts, as he completed on his blotting-paper an elaborate picture of a Turk seated on his divan. “’Cause, you see, sir, we’re in the Upper ’Ouse, now;—as I always thinks we hought to be. I don’t think it ain’t constitutional for the Petty Bag to be in the Commons, Mr. Robarts. Hany ways, it never usen’t.” “They’re changing all those sort of things now-a-days, Buggins,” said Robarts, giving the final touch to the Turk’s smoke.