As regarded East Barsetshire itself, he was returned, and fêted, and
sent home with his ears stuffed with eulogy, before the bucolic mind
had discovered his purpose. On so much he had probably calculated.
But he had calculated also that after an interval of three or four
days his secret would be known to all friends and enemies. On the day
after his speech came the report of it in the newspapers; on the next
day the leading articles, in which the world was told what it was
that the Prime Minister had really said. Then, on the following day,
the startled parsons, and the startled squires and farmers, and,
above all, the startled peers and members of the Lower House, whose
duty it was to vote as he should lead them, were all agog. Could it
be that the newspapers were right in this meaning which they had
attached to these words? On the day week after the election in East
Barsetshire, a Cabinet Council was called in London, at which it
would, of course, be Mr. Daubeny's duty to explain to his colleagues
what it was that he did purpose to do.

In the meantime he saw a colleague or two.

"Let us look it straight in the face," he said to a noble colleague;
"we must look it in the face before long."

"But we need not hurry it forward."

"There is a storm coming. We knew that before, and we heard the sound
of it from every husting in the country. How shall we rule the storm
so that it may pass over the land without devastating it? If we bring
in a bill--"

"A bill for disestablishing the Church!" said the horror-stricken