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 as
he had upset GEDGE when he was providentially stopped and convinced
that further struggle with obstruction was hopeless. So, Clause I.
agreed to, Bill talked out. MAKINS, growing increasingly delightful,
protested that a Bill that had been fifty years before the country,
was not to be rushed through the House on a Wednesday afternoon.
_Argal_, the more familiar the House is with the details of a measure,
the more necessary is it to debate it.
_Business done_.--Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister. Banns again
objected to.
_Saturday_, 1:25 A M.--Land Bill just through report stage. Nothing
left now but Third Reading. "Well, KNOX," said WINDBAG SEXTON, "that
will be our last opportunity, and we must make the most of it. In
meantime I think we've done pretty well. I'm especially pleased with
you. You're a boy of great promise. If anything happened to me--a
stray tack in the bench, or a pin maliciously directed, and the
wind-bag were to collapse--you'd do capitally, till I got it
repaired."
WINDBAG JUNIOR blushed. As OLD MORALITY remarks, Ingenuous youth
delights in the Approbation of Seasoned Seniority.
_Business done_.--Land at last--I mean Land Purchase Bill through at
last.
* * * * *