"Had we that,
there are a hundred young men who would have risked their necks there
and kept us abreast of our enemies. As it is, we have to wait till news
comes by some roundabout channel, while that cheerful being, Marka,
keeps the public easy by news of hypothetical private expeditious."
"And meantime there is that thousand-mile piece of desert of which we
know nothing, and where our friends may be playing pranks as they
please. Well, well, we must wait on developments. It is the last
refuge of the ill-informed. What about the dissolution? You are safe,
I suppose?"
Wratislaw nodded.
"I have been asked my forecast fifty times to-day, and I steadily refuse
to speak. But I may as well give it to you. We shall come back with a
majority of from fifty to eighty, and you, my dear fellow, will not be
forgotten."
"You mean the Under-Secretaryship," said the other. "Well, I don't mind
it."
"I should think not. Why, you will get that chance your friends have
hoped so long for, and then it is only a matter of time till you climb
the last steps. You are a youngish man for a Minister, for all your
elderly manners."
Wratislaw smiled the pleased smile of the man who hears kind words from
one whom he admires. "It won't be a bed of roses, you know. I am very
unpopular, and I have the grace to know it."
The elder man looked on the younger with an air of kindly wisdom.
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