"If we're merely to do as we are bid, and have no voice of our own, I don't see what's the good of going to the shop at all," said Mr. Sowerby.
"Not the least use," said Mr. Supplehouse. "We are false to our constituents in submitting to such a dominion."
"Let's have a change, then," said Mr. Sowerby. "The matter's pretty much in our own hands."
"Altogether," said Mr. Green Walker. "That's what my uncle always says."
"The Manchester men will only be too happy for the chance," said Harold Smith.
"And as for the high and dry gentlemen," said Mr. Sowerby, "it's not very likely that they will object to pick up the fruit when we shake the tree."
"As to picking up the fruit, that's as may be," said Mr. Supplehouse. Was he not the man to save the nation; and if so, why should he not pick up the fruit himself? Had not the greatest power in the country pointed him out as such, a savior? What though the country at the present moment needed no more saving, might there not nevertheless be a good time coming? Were there not rumors of other wars still prevalent—if, indeed, the actual war then going on was being brought to a close without his assistance, by some other species of salvation? He thought of that country to which he had pointed, and of that friend of his enemies, and remembered that there might be still work for a mighty savior. The public mind was now awake, and understood what it was about. When a man gets into his head an idea that the public voice calls for him, it is astonishing how great becomes his trust in the wisdom of the public. Vox populi vox Dei. "Has it not been so always?" he says to himself, as he gets up and as he goes to bed. And then Mr. Supplehouse felt that he was the master-mind there at Gatherum Castle, and that those there were all puppets in his hand. It is such a pleasant thing to feel that one's friends are puppets, and that the strings are in one's own possession. But what if Mr. Supplehouse himself were a puppet?
Some months afterward, when the much-belabored head of affairs was in very truth made to retire, when unkind shells were thrown in against him in great numbers, when
