"`The Chancellor of the Ex-exchequer ap-peal-ed to the 'Ouse to give doo con-sid-e-ra-tion to the wote--vote--and said--plead--' Blow the paper! it's awfully dry work going through all this 'Ouse of Commons business every morning. Not half so interesting as the little bits about the accidents and murders and 'saults down at the bottom of the weekly papers.--One never knows where one is; and the way I get the two sides of the 'Ouse mixed up together makes me thankful I ain't in Parlymint, or I should be doing some mischief. I wish Jessie would come. The members don't seem to talk quite so much stuff when she reads. Poor lass! I'd give a thousand pounds down--and I could give it, too," he added, with a fierce slap on his knee--"to see her looking as well and happy as she used to." He stopped, thinking for a few minutes. "No," he said aloud, "I haven't done wrong. I've said it a dozen times, and I says it again. `No, my lass, I ask no questions about it,' I says; `but that was an unpleasant piece of business about Fred Fraser, as is a reg'lar scamp; and if you loved Tom you didn't do right. You says he came and threw up something at the window, and you opened it, thinking it was Tom. Well, my gal, you didn't do right then, after what had happened.' But there, it's all over now--they belong to another set, unless they find out as we're well off now, and Max wants to be friends. Ha! ha! ha! I shouldn't wonder if he did some day. Ah, well! let's have some more paper." He went on reading for five minutes, and then threw the sheet impatiently away. "If it wasn't for seeming so ignorant, I wouldn't read a blessed line of it," he cried. "Talk, talk, talk! Why, they might say it all in half an hour; only one seems so out of everything if one can't talk about politics. No one ever says a word about the interesting paragraphs. I'm getting very tired of it all, and if ever I go into Parlymint I shall try for a comfortable seat below the gangway, or a hammock in the cabin." He pulled out a handsome self-winding gold watch, looked at the time with a sigh, and turned it over in his hand.