's coming, after
all.'

'He never comes to see _us_. He's far too busy, ain't he, Joey, even if
we can't see that he accomplishes much?'

'Give him time and you'll see!' said Farnborough, with a wag of his
head.

'Yes,' said Lord John, 'he's still a young man. Barely forty.'

'Barely forty! _They_ believe in prolonging their youth, don't they?'
said Lady Sophia to no one in particular, and with her mouth rather more
full of cake than custom prescribes. 'Good thing it isn't us, ain't it,
Joey?'

'For a politician forty _is_ young,' said Farnborough.

'Oh, don't I know it!' she retorted. 'I was reading the life of Randolph
Churchill the other day, and I came across a paragraph of filial
admiration about the hold Lord Randolph had contrived to get so early in
life over the House of Commons. It occurred to me to wonder just how
much of a boy Lord Randolph was at the time. I was going to count up
when I was saved the trouble by coming to a sentence that said he was
then "an unproved stripling of thirty-two." You shouldn't laugh. It
wasn't meant sarcastic.'

'Unless you're leader of the Opposition, I suppose it's not very easy to
do much while your party's out of power,' hazarded Lady John, 'is it?'

'One of the most interesting things about our coming back will be to
watch Stonor,' said Farnborough.

'After all, they said he did very well with his Under Secretaryship
under the last Government, didn't they?' Again Lady John appealed to the
two elder men.

'Oh, yes,' said Borrodaile. 'Oh, yes.'

'And the way'--Farnborough made up for any lack of enthusiasm--'the way
he handled that Balkan question!'

'All that was pure routine,' Lord John waved it aside. 'But if Stonor
had ever looked upon politics as more than a game, he'd have been a
power long before this.'

'Ah,' said Borrodaile, slowly, 'you go as far as that? I doubt myself if
he has enough of the demagogue in him.'

'But that's just why. The English people are not like the Americans or
the French. The English have a natural distrust of the demagogue. I tell
you if Stonor once believed in anything with might and main, he'd be a
leader of men.'

'Here he is now.'

Farnborough was the first to distinguish the sound of carriage wheels
behind the shrubberies. The others looked up and listened. Yes, the
crunch of gravel. The wall of laurel was too thick to give any glimpse
from this side of the drive that wound round to the main entrance. But
some anima