t such a
patient little fellow as Clarkson anywhere, if you'll only let him
have his own way. He'll look in, as he calls it, three times a week
for a whole season, and do nothing further. Of course he don't like
to be locked out."

"Is that the gentleman with whom the police interfered in the lobby?"
Erle inquired.

"A confounded bill discounter to whom our friend here has introduced
me,--for his own purposes," said Phineas.

"A very gentleman-like fellow," said Laurence. "Barrington knows
him, I daresay. Look here, Finn, my boy, take my advice. Ask him to
breakfast, and let him understand that the house will always be open
to him." After this Laurence Fitzgibbon and Barrington Erle got into
a cab together, and were driven away.

CHAPTER XXIX

A Cabinet Meeting

And now will the Muses assist me while I sing an altogether new song?
On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the First Lord's official residence
in Downing Street, and I will attempt to describe what, according to
the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said or might have
been said, what was done or might have been done, on so august an
occasion.

The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself to have been wrong
in his description of things in general, and is told so, roughly by
the critics, and tenderly by the friends of his bosom. He is moved
to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature before he
tells of them--as should be done by a strictly honest fictionist. He
catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March. His
dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the autumn. He opens the
opera-houses before Easter, and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday
evening. And then those terrible meshes of the Law! How is a
fictionist, in these excited days, to create the needed biting
interest without legal difficulties; and how again is he to steer his
little bark clear of so many rocks,--when the rocks and the shoals
have been purposely arranged to make the taking of a pilot on board a
necessity? As to those law meshes, a benevolent pilot will, indeed,
now and again give a poor fictionist a helping hand,--not used,
however, generally, with much discretion. But from whom is any
assistance to come in the august matter of a Cabinet assembly? There
can be no such assistance. No man can tell aught but they who will
tell nothing. But then, again, there is this safety, that let the
story be ever so mistold,--let the fiction be ev