y. He led a party who despised him--and he complacently imagined
that he was the party. His speech on this occasion bristled with
himself, and had, in truth, no other substance; the I's swarmed out upon
the audience like wasps.

Ashe groaned in spirit, "We have the ideas," he thought, "but they are
damned little good to us--it is the Tories who have the men! Ye gods!
must we all talk like this at last?"...

Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, behind Lord Parham, he
noticed that Kitty and Eddie Helston were exchanging signs. Kitty drew
out a tablet, wrote upon it, and, leaning over some white-frocked
children of the Lord Lieutenant who sat behind her, handed the torn leaf
to Helston. But from some clumsiness he let it drop; at the moment a
door opened at the back of the platform, and the leaf, caught by the
draught, was blown back across the bench where Kitty and the house-party
were sitting, and fluttered down to a resting-place on the piece of red
baize wheron Lord Parham was standing--close beside his left foot.

Ashe saw Kitty's start of dismay, her scarlet flush, her involuntary
movement. But Lord Parham had started on his peroration. The rustics
gaped, the gentry sat expressionless, the reporters toiled after the
great man. Kitty all the time kept her eyes fixed on the little white
paper; Ashe no less. Between him and Lord Parham there was first the
Lord Lieutenant, a portly man, very blind and extremely deaf--then a
table with a Liberal peer behind it for chairman.

Lord Parham had resumed his seat. The tent was shaken with cheers, and
the smiling chairman had risen.

"Can you ask Lord Parham to hand me on that paper on the floor," said
Ashe, in the ear of the Lord Lieutenant, "it seems to have dropped from
my portfolio."

The Lord Lieutenant, bending backward behind the chairman as the next
speaker rose, tried to attract Lord Parham's attention. Eddie Helston
was, at the same time, endeavoring to make his way forward through the
crowded seats behind the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile Lord Parham had perceived the paper, raised it, and adjusted
his spectacles. He thought it was a communication from the audience--a
question, perhaps, that he was expected to answer.

"Lord Parham!" cried the Lord Lieutenant again, "would you--"

"Silence, please! Speak up!"--from the audience, who had so far failed
to catch a word of what the new speaker was saying.

"What <i>is</i> the matter? You really can't get t