Читать книгу A Change in the Cabinet онлайн

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A Board meeting, especially if there is any chance of long argument with a late riser of exceptional stupidity, may last for an indefinite time. He gave it an hour and a half.

Then he must lunch, and that hour was earmarked for a certain foreigner who could not wholly make up his mind whether to build a certain bridge over a certain river for a certain government or no.

By a quarter to three he must be in the House of Commons to answer questions, for those which fell to his share came early upon the paper, and it was the pride of this exact and efficient man to keep no one waiting. Before four he must see the manager of a bank; the matter was urgent, he did not wish to write or telephone. By five he must be back again in his room in the House of Commons to receive a deputation of gentlemen who would arrive from his distant constituency, and who proposed with a mixture of insistence and of fear to demand certain commercial advantages for their town at the expense of a neighbouring borough whose representative but rarely busied himself with the Great Council of the Nation.