I Forbid the Banns! — page 280: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. ON THE FIRST CLOUD. HILE this little scene was taking place on the terrace steps at Ashmead, Julian was sitting in chilling silence by the side of Bertha in the mail phaeton, listening to her account of how amusing Sir Ecroyd Fairleigh had been. The idea of his being a cabinet minister was quite absurd, she declared. There was no guile in him. (She did not seem to perceive the defective logic of her deduction). He had much more of a boy’s nature in him than Charlie Bar- ham, the midshipman, seemed to have _ possessed, she declared ; and yet he appeared to know everything—even where General Boulanger got the money, and what the last speech of the leader of the opposition meant. He had invented anew game, she said—not the leader of the oppo- sition, who sticks to the old—but Sir Ecroyd. You geta hat, and, standing at a distance of four yards, you try to throw shillings into it. The coins that fail to effect a lodg- ment are left lying outside until they are gathered up by the player whose shilling gets into the hat. Sir Ecroyd said that he invented the game while waiting for the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary at a cabinet council at Downing Street. All the members played at it except the Secretary for Scotland, who was a Presbyterian ; and when the two absent ministers arrived and had the game explained to them, they became so interested in it, they took off their coats and joined in. ‘They continued playing till six o'clock, when the council adjourned ; and the newspapers, who were supposed to know all about cabinet councils, wrote leading articles explaining that a more successful council had not 270 ¢ Gomichooks (E(0) m