ust be reported, and chance of Bill for present Session lost. MAKINS
himself in high oratorical feather. OSBORNE-AP-MORGAN, having made a
proposition and subsequently withdrawn it, MAKINS, putting on severest
judicial aspect, observed, "It is all very well for the Right Hon.
and learned Gentleman to make a legal JONAH of himself and swallow his
opinions."

"Bless us all!" cried ROWNTREE, looking on with blank amazement,
"MAKINS evidently thinks that JONAH swallowed the whale." Bill
seemed to shatter friendships and dissever old alliances. SQUIRE of
MALWOOD naturally at home in the fray, but rather startling to find
HOME SECRETARY running amuck at CHAMBERLAIN. MATTHEWS in his most
hoity-toity mood; quivered with indignation; thumped the table; shook
a forensic forefinger at the undesignedly offending JOSEPH, and,
generally, went on the rampage. As for HENEAGE, he filled up any
little pause in uproar by diving in and moving the Closure. Once,
whilst GEDGE was opposing an Amendment hostile to Bill, HENEAGE dashed
in with his Closure motion. GEDGE's face a study; mingled surprise,
indignation, and ineffable regret mantled his mobile front.

[Illustration: "Bless us all!"]

"To think," he said afterwards, "that just when I was coming to
HENEAGE's help with an argument founded on profound study and pointed
with legal lore, he should suddenly jump up, lower his head, and, as
it were, butt me in the stomach with the Closure. It is more than I
can at the moment comprehend."

GEDGE so flurried that when Members returned, after Division on
Closure, he being, in accordance with the rule, seated and wearing his
hat, wanted to argue out the question with COURTNEY.

"I submit, Sir," he said, "that the Hon. Member, in moving the
Closure, controverted Rule 186."

The Chairman: "I think the Hon. Member can scarcely have read the
Rule."

Mr. GEDGE: "I have read the Rule, Sir. This is what it says--"

Chairman: "Order! Order!" and GEDGE subsided.

Then TOMLINSON fortuitously turning up on Treasury Bench, joined in
conversation. But COURTNEY turned upon him with such a thunderous
cry of "Order! Order!" that TOMLINSON visibly shrivelled up, and his
sentence, like the unfinished window in ALLADIN's Tower, unfinished
must remain.

Wrangling went on till a quarter past five, when TALBOT interposed,
and with most funereal manner moved to report progress. HENEAGE almost
mechanically lowered his head and had started to butt at TALBOT