"Well, Mr Dubberley, when you go home this afternoon, go upstairs and fill the bath with water. Then take a large bath-sponge--something nearly as broad as the bath--and sweep it along from end to end, about a foot below the surface, at a speed of fifteen miles per hour--that will be twenty-two feet per second--and see what happens!"

Robin had unconsciously dropped into what I may call his debating-society manner. His chin stuck out, and his large chest heaved, and he scooped the air, as if it had been the water of Dubberley's bath, with one of Kitty's priceless Worcester teacups.

Dubberley sat completely demoralised, palpitating like a stranded frog.

"Then," continued Robin, "you would observe the result of placing a partly submerged and rapidly moving body in a shallow and restricted waterway. You would kick half the water right out of the canal to begin with, and the other half would pile itself up into a wave under your bow big enough to offer an almost immovable resistance to the progress of your vessel."

He leaned back and surveyed the bemused Dubberley with complete and obvious satisfaction. We all sat round breathless, feeling much as Sidney Smith must have felt when some one spoke disrespectfully of the Equator. Great was the fall of Dubberley. He moved, perhaps instinctively, in a society where he was seldom contradicted and never argued with. One does not argue with a gramophone. And here this raw Scottish youth, with the awful thoroughness and relentless common-sense of his race, had taken the very words out of his mouth, torn them to shreds, and thrust them down his throat.

I am afraid I chuckled. The Twins sat hand in hand, with dreamy eyes staring straight before them. They were conjuring up a joyous vision of Dubberley, in his shirt-sleeves, meekly refuting one of his own theories by means of a childish and sloppy experiment in practical hydrodynamics in his own bathroom.

I give this incident as a fair example of Robin's point of view and methods of action on questions which I for one would never dream of debating. He was entirely lacking in an art which I am told I possess to perfection--that of suffering fools gladly. Its possession has raised me to an Under-Secretaryship. People who should know tell me that it will also prevent my ever rising to anything higher.

"We had a taste of our friend's quality this afternoon," I remarked to my household when we met for dinner that evening. "He is a thorough-going warrior. Fancy any man taking all that trouble to lay out old Dubberley!"

"Poor Mr Dubberley!" said tender-hearted Kitty.

"Do him good!" said Dilly, in whose recollection Dubberley's past enormities loomed large. "I shall be nice to the Secretary Bird now."

Dolly said nothing, which was unusual. Perhaps the brown spot still rankled.

CHAPTER FIVE.

ROBIN ON DUTY.

Beyond the fact that they are all desperately in earnest, all know each other, and occupy all the most responsible and lucrative posts on the face of the earth, Scotsmen are a class with whose characteristics I am not well acquainted. But I learned a great deal from my new secretary.

Robin soon settled down to work. He not only performed his duties with zeal and discretion, but he kept me up to mine. He hounded me through the routine work of my Department; he verified my references; he managed my correspondence; and he frequently drafted my speeches. He even prepared some of my impromptus. Indeed, my--or rather his--description of a certain member of the other side, a lesser light of the last Government, a worthy man, always put up to explain matters when his leader had decided that honesty on this occasion was the best policy, as "a political niblick, always employed to get his party out of bad lies,"

won me more applause and popularity in a House of enthusiastic golfers than endless weeks of honest toil behind the scenes had ever done.

But I learned more from Robin than that. I suppose I am a typical specimen of Conservative officialdom. Until Robin came into my house it had never occurred to me to ask myself why I was a Conservative: I had been born one, and it was difficult for me to understand how any man of ordinary intelligence could be anything else.

My father and grandfather were Conservative members before me, and I come of a line which has always feared God, honoured the King, paid its tithes, and tried to do something for the poor; and which regards Radicals, Socialists, Nonconformists, and criminal lunatics as much the same class of person. The only difference between myself and my forebears is that I am much too pacific (or lazy) to cherish any animosity against people whose views differ from my own. This fact, coupled with certain family traditions, has brought me to my present position in life; and, as I have already indicated, it will probably keep me there. At least, so Kitty says.

"You must _assert_ yourself, dear," she declares. "Be _rude_ to people, and go on being rude! Then they will take notice of you and give you nice big posts to keep you quiet. Do you know what the Premier said about you the other night at dinner, to Lady Bindle? (She told Dicky Lever, and he told the Twins.) 'Inglethwaite? A dear fellow, a sound party man, and runs his Department admirably. But--he strikes only on the box!' Pig!"

It was about this time that Robin became a member of our establishment.

I had no idea what his political views were--it was just like me not to have asked him, Kitty said--but felt confident that whatever side he supported he would do so hot and strong.

But at first he gave no indication of his leanings. It was not until we sat one night over our wine, in company with John Champion (member for a big northern constituency, and regarded by many, notwithstanding various eccentricities, as the coming man of the party) that he first gave definite utterance to his views.

The cigars had gone round, and we had just performed that mysterious national rite which, whether it owes its existence to economy or politeness, invariably ends in several people burning their fingers with the same match.

"I suppose, Mr Fordyce," said Champion, who had not met Robin before, but obviously liked him, "that in common with all Scotsmen you are at heart a Radical."

"Am I?" said Robin, with native caution.

"Most of your countrymen are," said Champion, with a sigh. "'They think too much'--you know the rest of the quotation, I expect."

Robin nodded.

I was a little scandalised at this flagrant tribute to the enemy, and said so.

Champion laughed.

"You are a whole-hearted old war-horse, Adrian. I envy you. Sometimes, I wish that I----"

"For mercy's sake don't go and say that you are a Radical at heart too,"

I cried.

"N-n-o. But isn't it rot, the whole business?"

"What whole business?"

"Ask Mr Fordyce there. He will tell you. I see it in his eye."

"What is rot, Robin?" I asked. "Party government?"

"Yes," said Robin, quite explosively for him. "It is such a scandalous waste of power and material." He laid down his cigar. "Man, it's just pitiful. Consider! A party is returned to office. With great care and discrimination a Cabinet is chosen. It is composed of men who are mainly honest and patriotic. They are not necessarily men of genius, but they are all men of undoubted ability, and they are genuinely anxious to do their duty by the country. Now observe." (As a matter of fact he said "obsairrve.") "How is this energy and ability expended? About half of it--fifty per cent--goes in devising means to baffle the assaults of the Opposition and so retain a precarious hold on office. Sir, it's just ludicrous! Instead of concentrating their efforts upon--upon--I want a metaphor, Mr Champion."

"Upon steering the ship of State," said Champion, with a twinkle in his eye.

"That'll do, fine.--Upon steering the ship of State, they have to devote half their time and energy to dodging the missiles of their shipmates.

That is what I mean when I say the thing is pitiful. What should we think of the sanity of an ordinary ship's company, if the man at the wheel had to spend half his time up in the rigging because a minority of his messmates wanted to throw him overboard?"

"I think you are putting the case too strongly," I said. "The criticism of a healthy public opinion is no bad thing. Besides, your Cabinet still have fifty per cent of their energy left. What do they do with that?"

"Of that," said Champion, joining in, "about forty per cent is wasted on mere parade--dummy legislation--bills that never will be passed, and which no sensible man has any desire should be passed, except in a mutilated and useless condition; bills merely brought forward by the Government as a sop to the extreme wing of their own party. It doesn't matter which side is in power. If they are Liberals, they have to propose a few socialistic and iconoclastic measures, secretly thanking God for the House of Lords all the while. If they are Conservatives, they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining ten per cent----"

"About nine," resumed Robin, "is appropriated automatically to absolutely essential routine business, like the Budget and Supply----"

"And the remaining one per cent," struck in Champion, "is devoted to real live Legislation."

Then they both looked at me, this pair of carping pessimists, rather furtively, like two fags who have allowed their tongues to wag over freely in the presence of a monitor. It was a curious tribute to the power of officialdom, for they were both far bigger men, in every sense, than I. Finally Champion laughed.

"Don't look so horrified, Adrian," he said. "Mr Fordyce and I croak too much. Still, you will find a grain or two of sense among the chaff, as Jack Point says."

But I was not to be smoothed down so easily.

"According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is practically no difference between one political party and another."

"None whatever," said Champion cheerfully--"not between the _backbones_ of the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me, Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty years that might not have been put there by either party without any violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again.

Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,--I daresay one assertion is about as true as the other--but I don't think there is a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you, when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now.

Just a difference of label, that's all."