y downstairs, but Blanche had taken to early rising, and was
already down. He found them all breakfasting together in a sheltered
corner of the courtyard.

Berenice, after the usual greetings and explanations, smiled at him
thoughtfully.

"I am not sure," she said, "whether I ought to congratulate you or not.
Sir Leslie here thinks that you mean mischief!"

"Only on the principle," Borrowdean said, "that whoever is not with us is
against us."

"We are all agreed upon one thing," Berenice said. "It was your last
speech, the one the night before the election, which carried you in. A
national party indeed! A legislator, not a politician! You talked to
those canny Yorkshiremen with your head in the clouds, and yet they
listened."

Mannering smiled as he poured out his coffee.

"I talked common sense to them," he remarked, "and Yorkshiremen like
that. We have been slaves to the old-fashioned idea of party Government
long enough. It's an absurd thing when you come to think of it. Fancy a
great business being carried on by a board of partners of divergent
views, and unable to make a purchase or a sale or effect any change
whatever without talking the whole thing threadbare, and then voting
upon it. The business would go down, of course!"

"Party Government," Borrowdean declared, "is the natural evolution of
any republican form of administration. A nation that chooses its own
representatives must select them from its varying standpoint."

"Their views may differ slightly upon some matters," Mannering said,
"but their first duty should be to come into accord with one another.
It is a matter for compromises, of course. The real differences between
intelligent men of either party are very slight. The trouble is that
under the present system everything is done to increase them instead
of bridging them over."

"If you had to form a Government, then," Berenice asked, "you would not
choose the members from one party?"

"Certainly not," Mannering answered. "Supposing I were the owner of
Redford's car there, and wanted a driver. I should simply try to get the
best man I could, and I should certainly not worry as to whether he were,
say, a churchman or a dissenter. The best man for the post is what the
country has a right to expect, whatever he may call himself, and the
country doesn't get it. The people pay the piper, and I consider that
they get shocking bad value for their money. The Boer War, for instance,
would have cos