and probably the House also. As to Mr. Supplehouse—he would use all his influence on Supplehouse. But, after all, Mr. Supplehouse was not every thing.
On the morning after our vicar's arrival in London he attended at the Petty Bag office. It was situated in the close neighborhood of Downing Street and the higher governmental gods; and though the building itself was not much, seeing that it was shored up on one side, that it bulged out in the front, was foul with smoke, dingy with dirt, and was devoid of any single architectural grace or modern scientific improvement, nevertheless its position gave it a status in the world which made the clerks in the Lord Petty Bag's office quite respectable in their walk in life. Mark had seen his friend Sowerby on the previous evening, and had then made an appointment with him for the following morning at the new minister's office. And now he was there a little before his time, in order that he might have a few moments' chat with his brother.
When Mark found himself in the private secretary's room, he was quite astonished to see the change in his brother's appearance which the change in his official rank had produced. Jack Robarts had been a well-built, straight-legged, lissome young fellow, pleasant to the eye because of his natural advantages, but rather given to a harum-skarum style of gait, and occasionally careless, not to say slovenly, in his dress. But now he was the very pink of perfection. His jaunty frock-coat fitted him to perfection; not a hair of his head was out of place; his waistcoat and trowsers were glossy and new, and his umbrella, which stood in the umbrella-stand in the corner, was tight, and neat, and small, and natty.
"Well, John, you've become quite a great man," said his brother.
"I don't know much about that," said John, "but I find that I have an enormous deal of fagging to go through."
"Do you mean work? I thought you had about the easiest berth in the whole civil service."
"Ah! that's just the mistake that people make. Because we don't cover whole reams of foolscap paper at the rate of fifteen lines to a page, and five words to a line, people think that we private secretaries have got nothing to do. Look here;" and he tossed over scornfully a dozen or so of little notes. "I tell you what, Mark, it is no easy
