“I may not be here,” she continued, “when the new plans are submitted. Tell them not to forget the foundation this time. Tell them to teach the children.” “One feels it,” explained Joan.!

“I did go over it,” he answered. “But it would be rather absurd for just Mary and me.” Joan shot a glance. The girl was evidently serious.

It didn’t strike her as at all odd that a leader of a political party should ask her “if she minded” his being in Paris to attend a political conference. He was wearing a light grey suit and a blue tie. There was nothing about him, at that moment, suggesting that he was a leader of any sort. He might have been just any man, but for his eyes. For answer she had rolled up her sleeve, and let them examine her arm. And then, in her turn, had insisted on rolling up his sleeve, revealing the fact that his arms above the wrists had evidently not too recently been washed; and the episode had ended in laughter and a babel of shrill voices. And, at once, they were a party of chums, discussing matters together. “Just all the difference,” answered Greyson, “between Pooh Bah as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Lord High Admiral, or Chief Executioner, whichever he preferred to be, and Pooh Bah as all the Officers of State rolled into one. Pooh Bah may be a very able statesman, entitled to exert his legitimate influence. But, after all, his opinion is only the opinion of one old gentleman, with possible prejudices and preconceived convictions. The Mikado—or the people, according to locality—would like to hear the views of others of his ministers. He finds that the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice and the Groom of the Bedchamber and the Attorney-General—the whole entire Cabinet, in short, are unanimously of the same opinion as Pooh Bah. He doesn’t know it’s only Pooh Bah speaking from different corners of the stage. The consensus of opinion convinces him. One statesman, however eminent, might err in judgment. But half a score of statesmen, all of one mind! One must accept their verdict.”