"Ah, poor Jack Horner!" laughed the vicar; "he's really not very bright. But, we need not be so uncharitable as to think that he does not do his money's worth for his money! He writes a beautiful hand, you know; and, I dare say, his mere services as a copying machine are of some value. Government clerks do not all play every day, Frank:--you will, I'm sure, find plenty to do, if you go into office life. I remember, in the time of the Crimean war, that a friend of mine, employed in the Admiralty at Whitehall, used to have to stop up every alternate night at his office, the whole night through; and this was the case, too, at all the other public departments! The clerks in each room were obliged to take it in turn for night duty; while, those who were free to go home--and they did not leave work until long after the traditional `four o'clock' on most days--had to specify where they could be found every evening, in case they should be suddenly wanted on the arrival of despatches from the seat of war. Of course this state of affairs is not ordinary; still, Government clerks are not idlers as a body:--on the contrary, you will find them thorough working-men." "Working-men!" ejaculated little Miss Pimpernell, raising her beady black eyes in astonishment to her brother, "why, I thought all working- men, properly so-called, were mechanics!" "That is the radical politician's view, my dear," answered the vicar. "Let a man be apprenticed to a skilled trade, and carry a bricklayer's hod, or a carpenter's rule. Let him only wear slops and work in an engine-room, or use a mason's trowel--so long as he does these things and receives his wages weekly, he is a `working-man;' and, must have the hours of labour made to suit him, the legislation of the country altered on his behalf, the taxation of the public judiciously contrived to steer clear of him. He is the typical `working-man,' my dear, of whom demagogues are always prating:--the fetish, before which so-called `liberal' statesmen fall down and worship! "But, your poor agricultural labourer, who lives in poverty, and dirt, and misery--starving annually on a tenth portion of the wages that the skilled mechanic gets--_he_ is no working-man; oh no! Nor the wretched London clerk; he, also, is no working-man; nor the Government hack; nor the striving, hard-worked doctor; besides, many professional men and struggling tradesmen, who, for the larger portion of their lives, inch and pinch to scrape out existence! "None of these are working-men; although they work harder--and for many more hours per diem than the mechanic--on, in most instances, a less income than the happy protege of the radical law-maker gets by the addition of his weekly wages at the year's end.