said, for thinking he had.

And Harry accepted it meekly, and made up his own mind that Philip didn't
know much about women.




CHAPTER XLV.

The galleries of the House were packed, on the momentous day, not because
the reporting of an important bill back by a committee was a thing to be
excited about, if the bill were going to take the ordinary course
afterward; it would be like getting excited over the empaneling of a
coroner's jury in a murder case, instead of saving up one's emotions for
the grander occasion of the hanging of the accused, two years later,
after all the tedious forms of law had been gone through with.

But suppose you understand that this coroner's jury is going to turn out
to be a vigilance committee in disguise, who will hear testimony for an
hour and then hang the murderer on the spot? That puts a different
aspect upon the matter. Now it was whispered that the legitimate forms
of procedure usual in the House, and which keep a bill hanging along for
days and even weeks, before it is finally passed upon, were going to be
overruled, in this case, and short work made of the, measure; and so,
what was beginning as a mere inquest might, torn out to be something very
different.

In the course of the day's business the Order of "Reports of Committees"
was finally reached and when the weary crowds heard that glad