e pardoned without being made
Mrs. Arthur Fletcher. While Emily was still at Longbarns the old lady
almost talked over her daughter-in-law to this way of thinking,--till
John Fletcher put his foot upon it altogether. "I don't pretend to
say what she may do," he said.

"Oh, John," said the mother, "to hear a man like you talk like that
is absurd. She'd jump at him if he looked at her with half an eye."

"What she may do," he continued saying, without appearing to listen
to his mother, "I cannot say. But that he will ask her to be his wife
is as certain as that I stand here."

CHAPTER LXXII

"He Thinks That Our Days Are Numbered"

All the details of the new County Suffrage Bill were settled at
Matching during the recess between Mr. Monk, Phineas Finn, and a
very experienced gentleman from the Treasury, one Mr. Prime, who was
supposed to know more about such things than any man living, and was
consequently called Constitution Charlie. He was an elderly man, over
sixty years of age, who remembered the first Reform Bill, and had
been engaged in the doctoring of constituencies ever since. The
Bill, if passed, would be mainly his Bill, and yet the world would
never hear his name as connected with it. Let us hope that he was
comfortable at Matching, and that he found his consolation in the
smiles of the Duchess. During this time the old Duke was away, and
even the Prime Minister was absent for some days. He would fain have
busied himself about the Bill himself, but was hardly allowed by his
colleagues to have any hand in framing it. The great points of the
measure had of course been arranged in the Cabinet,--where, however,
Mr. Monk's views had been adopted almost without a change. It may not
perhaps be too much to assume that one or two members of the Cabinet
did not quite understand the full scope of every suggested clause.
The effects which clauses will produce, the dangers which may be
expected from this or that change, the manner in which this or that
proposition will come out in the washing, do not strike even Cabinet
Ministers at a glance. A little study in a man's own cabinet, after
the reading perhaps of a few leading articles, and perhaps a short
conversation with an astute friend or two, will enable a statesman
to be strong at a given time for, or even, if necessary, against
a measure, who has listened in silence, and has perhaps given his
personal assent, to the original suggestion. I doubt whether Lor