vertheless, the Queen's Government is carried
on, and the propensity and aptitude of men for this work seems to be
not at all on the decrease. If we have but few young statesmen, it is
because the old stagers are so fond of the rattle of their harness.

"I really do not see how the Queen's Government is to be carried on,"
said Harold Smith to Green Walker, standing in a corner of one of the
lobbies of the House of Commons on the first of those days of awful
interest, in which the Queen was sending for one crack statesman
after another; and some anxious men were beginning to doubt whether
or no we should, in truth, be able to obtain the blessing of another
Cabinet. The gods had all vanished from their places. Would the
giants be good enough to do anything for us or no? There were men who
seemed to think that the giants would refuse to do anything for us.
"The House will now be adjourned over till Monday, and I would not be
in Her Majesty's shoes for something," said Mr. Harold Smith.

"By Jove! no," said Green Walker, who in these days was a staunch
Harold Smithian, having felt a pride in joining himself on as a
substantial support to a Cabinet minister. Had he contented himself
with being merely a Brockite, he would have counted as nobody. "By
Jove! no," and Green Walker opened his eyes and shook his head, as
he thought of the perilous condition in which Her Majesty must be
placed. "I happen to know that Lord ---- won't join them unless he
has the Foreign Office," and he mentioned some hundred-handed Gyas
supposed to be of the utmost importance to the counsels of the
Titans.

"And that, of course, is impossible. I don't see what on earth
they are to do. There's Sidonia; they do say that he's making some
difficulty now." Now Sidonia was another giant, supposed to be very
powerful.

"We all know that the Queen won't see him," said Green Walker, who,
being a member of Parliament for the Crewe Junction, and nephew to
Lady Hartletop, of course had perfectly correct means of ascertaining
what the Queen would do, and what she would not.

"The fact is," said Harold Smith, recurring again to his own
situation as an ejected god, "that the House does not in the least
understand what it is about;--doesn't know what it wants. The
question I should like to ask them is this: do they intend that the
Queen shall have a Government, or do they not? Are they prepared to
support such men as Sidonia and Lord De Terrier? If so, I am the