human
I told you how it would be!
gpt
Well, I've lost my money.
human
I could not have believed that Scotsmen would be such fools.
gpt
I'm awfully sorry for Dalkeith.
human
Why couldn't that old windbag have stuck to Greenwich?
gpt
I blame Rosebery for getting him down.
human
Well, I suppose we're in for another Gladstone Premiership.
gpt
Oh, no fear. The Queen won't speak to him.
human
No, Hartington's the man, and, as an old Whig, I'm glad of it.
gpt
Perhaps Gladstone will take the Exchequer.
human
What! serve under Hartington? You don't know the old gentleman's pride if you expect that; and so on and so forth, a chorus of excited and bewildering exclamations. Amid all the hurly-burly, one figure in the throng seemed quite unmoved, and its immobility attracted the notice of the throng.
gpt
Well, really, Vaughan, I should have thought that even you would have felt excited about this. I know you don't care much about politics in a general way, but this is something out of the common. The Duke of Buccleuch beaten on his own ground, and Gladstone heading straight for the Premiership! Isn't that enough to quicken your pulse?
human
Well, I don't think I ever was quite as much in love with Dizzy as you were; and as to the Premiership, we are not quite at the end yet, and _Alors comme alors_.
gpt
Vaughan is really the most extraordinary fellow I know. There is nothing on earth that interests him in the faintest degree. Politics, books, sport, society, foreign affairs--he I never seems to care a rap about any of them; and yet he knows something about them all, and, if only you can get him to talk, he can talk extremely well. It is particularly curious about politics, for generally, if a man has once been in political life, he feels the fascination of it to the end.
human
But was Vaughan ever in political life?
gpt
Oh yes I suppose you are too young to remember. He got into Parliament just after he left Oxford. He was put in by an old uncle for a Family Borough--Bilton--one of those snug little seats, not exactly 'Pocket Boroughs,' but very like them, which survived until the Reform Act of 1867.
human
How long did he sit?
gpt
Only for one Parliament--from 1852 to 1857. No one ever knew why he gave up. He put it on health, but I believe it was just freakishness. He always was an odd chap, and of course he grows odder as he grows older.