concession. You'll find they'll shake down after the usual
amount of resistance and compliance. No;--don't leave your
house to-morrow to see anybody unless it be Mr Daubney or Her
Majesty. I'll come to you at two, and if her Grace will give me
luncheon, I'll lunch with her. Good night, and don't think too
much of the bigness of the thing. I remember dear old Lord Brock
telling me how much more difficult it was to find a good coachman
than a good Secretary of State.'

The Duke of Omnium, as he sat thinking of things for the next
hour in his chair, succeeded in proving to himself that Lord
Brock never ought to have been Prime Minister of England after
having ventured to make so poor a joke on so solemn a subject.



CHAPTER 8

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW CAREER.

By the time that the Easter holidays were over,--holidays which
had been used so conveniently for the making of a new government,
--the work of getting a team together had been accomplished by
the united energy of the two dukes and other friends. The
filling up of the great places had been by no means so difficult
or so tedious,--nor indeed the cause of half so many heartburns,
--as the completion of the list of subordinates. Noblesse
oblige. The Secretaries of State, and the Chancellors, and the
First Lords, selected from this or the other party felt that the
eyes of mankind were upon them, and that it behoved them to