ouse went on just as if Sir Orlando Drought had not moved his
seat at all.

"What makes everybody and everything so dead?" said Sir Orlando to
his old friend Mr. Boffin as they walked home together from the
House that night. They had in former days been staunch friends,
sitting night after night close together, united in opposition, and
sometimes, for a few halcyon months, in the happier bonds of office.
But when Sir Orlando had joined the Coalition, and when the sterner
spirit of Mr. Boffin had preferred principles to place,--to use the
language in which he was wont to speak to himself and to his wife
and family of his own abnegation,--there had come a coolness
between them. Mr. Boffin, who was not a rich man, nor by any means
indifferent to the comforts of office, had felt keenly the injury
done to him when he was left hopelessly in the cold by the desertion
of his old friends. It had come to pass that there had been no
salt left in the opposition. Mr. Boffin in all his parliamentary
experience had known nothing like it. Mr. Boffin had been sure that
British honour was going to the dogs and that British greatness was
at an end. But the secession of Sir Orlando gave a little fillip to
his life. At any rate he could walk home with his old friend and talk
of the horrors of the present day.

"Well, Drought, if you ask me, you know, I can only speak as I feel.
Everything must be dead when men holding different opinions on every
subject under the sun come together in order that they may carry on a
government as they would a trade business. The work may be done, but
it must be done without spirit."

"But it may be all important that the work should be done," said the
Baronet, apologising for his past misconduct.

"No doubt;--and I am very far from judging those who make the
attempt. It has been made more than once before, and has, I think,
always failed. I don't believe in it myself, and I think that
the death-like torpor of which you speak is one of its worst
consequences." After that Mr. Boffin admitted Sir Orlando back into
his heart of hearts.

Then the end of the Session came, very quietly and very early. By
the end of July there was nothing left to be done, and the world of
London was allowed to go down into the country almost a fortnight
before its usual time.

With many men, both in and out of Parliament, it became a question
whether all this was for good or evil. The Boffinites had of course
much to say for