hat evening.

Number forty-eight (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic
resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here.
Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty
voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom. The Honourable
Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but his intimate
friends ever looked in the third from the top bureau drawer.

The proprietor of the Pelican, who in common with the rest of humanity
had fallen a victim to the rough and honest charms and hearty good
fellowship of the Honourable Jake, always placed a large padded arm-chair
in number forty-eight before the sessions, knowing that the Honourable
Jake's constituency would be uniformly kind to him. There Mr. Botcher was
wont to sit (when he was not depressing one of the tiles in the rotunda),
surrounded by his friends and their tobacco smoke, discussing in his
frank and manly fashion the public questions of the day.

Mr. Crewe thought it a little strange that, whenever he entered a room in
the Pelican, a silence should succeed the buzz of talk which he had heard
through the closed transom; but he very naturally attributed this to the
constraint which ordinary men would be likely to feel in his presence. In
the mouth of one presumptuous member the word "railroad" was cut in two
by an agate glance from the Honourable Brush, and Mr. Crewe noted with
some surprise that the Democratic leader of the House, Mr. Painter, was
seated on Mr. Botcher's mattress, with an expression that was in singular
contrast to the look of bold defiance which he had swept over the House
that afternoon in announcing his opposition policy. The vulgar political
suggestion might have crept into a more trivial mind than Mr. Crewe's
that Mr. Painter was being, "put to bed," the bed being very similar to
that of Procrustes. Mr. Botcher extracted himself from the nooks and
crannies of his armchair.

"How are you, Crewe?" he said hospitably; "we're all friends here--eh,
Painter? We don't carry our quarrels outside the swinging doors. You know
Mr. Crewe--by sight, of course. Do you know these other gentlemen, Crewe?
I didn't expect you so early."

The "other gentlemen" said that they were happy to make the acquaintance
of their fellow-member from Leith, and seemingly with one consent began
to edge towards the door.

"Don't go, boys," Mr. Bascom protested. "Let me finish that story."

Som