Cap'en just rising with intent to observe that there are not forty Members present, when happier thought struck him. Why not get some landsman to do the trick? The more venerable and venerated the agent the better. TOMMY knows himself to be a wicked old salt. House not shocked now at anything he does. Half the fun gone if he played this prank himself. Shifting his quid and scanning horizon, noted in his place Sir RICHARD TEMPLE, Bart., G.C.S.I., late Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, once Governor of Bombay, sometime Chief Commissioner of Central Provinces of India. The very man for the job. Buttonholing him with his hook, Cap'en TOMMY opened his little plot. TEMPLE aghast at first. Never known such a thing done, and the like. TOMMY jawed away, twisting TEMPLE round the tip of his hook like a marlingspike on a flying jibboom. Convinced him that public duty called for sacrifice of private prejudices. Having squared TEMPLE, TOMMY got men near him to walk out before House was counted, so as to reduce chances of quorum. Bell rang; Members rushed in; Ministers huddled on Treasury Bench like flock of frightened sheep. TOMMY, looking down from shrouds in Strangers' Gallery, carefully counted. "Only thirty two," he said. "Done it!" But SPEAKER can count as well. "One-two--four--fourteen--twenty-seven--thirty-nine, forty," said he, with tone of conviction that precluded contradiction. "Blow me tight!" said TOMMY, coming out of the shrouds, a deathly pallor shining through his tan. That was not his exact expression; but it was equivalent to his remark. _Business done._--Quite a lot. [Illustration: Vantage in (Sir E. Gr-y and Sir E. Ashm-d-B-rtl-tt.)] _Tuesday._--EDWARD GREY is a hard nut for Irresponsible Verbosity to crack. SILOMIO, his jaws aching with attempts at crunching SYDNEY BUXTON, sometimes turns to him, and goes away sorrowing. TOMMY has a tuck in at him occasionally, but makes nothing of the job. To night AMBROSE, Q.C., took him in hand. Drew up stupendous question on subject of Great Britain's relations with the Porte in respect of Armenia. "That'll fetch him," he said, as he ogled the paper on which the question was set forth in bold type. Is there a treaty obligation, he wanted to know, as distinguished from mere discretionary right, authorising Great Britain to interfere in the affairs of Armenia, or make war upon the Porte? If so, specify the treaty and the particular article or articles creating such obligation. This a bare summary of question, the drafting of which had cost AMBROSE, Q.C., some sleepless nights. SILOMIO had looked over it; TOMMY had touched it up; BARTLEY had beamed over it; HANBURY had hugged it. GREY'S last hour (of course in Parliamentary sense) had evidently come. He had wriggled out of some earlier man traps set for him. This would settle him. And this is what GREY said in reply:--"The article of the Treaty of Berlin relative to the point raised by the hon. member is the sixty-first."