“Yes, but it does though,--I'm coming to it. I have a system of artificial memory, and I have just arrived at you now through Carlton House, milk-punch, and that story about Lord Grey and yourself riding postilions to Ascot, and you on the wheelers tipping up Grey with your whip till he grew frantic. Was n't that a fact?” “I wait for the message, sir; or rather I grow impatient at not hearing it.” “I remember it perfectly. It's a place he wants to offer you; it's a something under the Courts of Law. You are to do next to nothing,--nothing at all, I believe, if you prefer it, as the last fellow did. He lived in Dresden for the education of his children, and he died there, and we did n't know when he died,--at least they suspect he signed some dozen life certificates that his doctor used to forward at quarter-day. Mind, I don't give you the story as mine; but the impression is that he held the office for eight years after his death.” “Perhaps, sir, you would now favor me with the name and nature of the appointment.” “He was called the Deputy-Assistant Sub-something of somewhere in the Exchequer; and he had to fill, or to register, or to put a seal, or, if not a seal, a stamp on some papers; but the marrow of the matter is, he had eight hundred a year for it; and when the Act passed requiring two seals, he asked for an increase of salary and an assistant clerk, and they gave him two hundred more, but they refused the clerk. They do such shabby things in those short sittings over the Estimates!” “And am I to understand that his Excellency makes me an offer of this appointment?” “Well, not exactly; there's a hitch in it,--I may say there are two hitches: first of all, we 're not sure it's in our gift; and, secondly--” “Perhaps I may spare you the secondly,--the firstly is more than enough for me.” “Yes, but I'd like to explain. Here's how it is: the Chief Baron claimed the patronage about twenty years ago, and we made, or the people who were in power made, some sort of a compromise about an ultimate nomination, and he was to have the first. Now this man only died t' other day, having held the office, as I said, upwards of twenty years,--a most unconscionable thing,--just one of those selfish acts small official fellows are always doing; and so _I_ thought, as I saw your name down for something on his Excellency's list, that I 'd mention _you_ for the post as a sort of sop to Baron Lendrick, saying, 'Look at our man; we are not going to saddle the country with one of your long-annuity fellows,--_he_ 's eighty if he's a day.' I say, I 'd press this point, because the old Judge says he is no longer bound by the terms of the compromise, for that the office was abolished and reconstructed by the 58th of Victoria, and that he now insists on the undivided patronage.” “I presume that the astute reasons which induced you to think of _me_ have not been communicated to the Viceroy.”