'May I stay over till the next train?' Farnborough was whispering to Lady John as he went round to her on the pretext of more cream. 'Thank you--then I won't go till the six forty-two.'
'I didn't know,' Lady Sophia was observing in her somewhat crude way, 'that you knew Geoffrey as well as all that.'
'We don't,' said Lord John. 'He's been saying for years he wanted to come down and try our links, but it's by a fluke that he's coming, after all.'
'He never comes to see _us_. He's far too busy, ain't he, Joey, even if we can't see that he accomplishes much?'
'Give him time and you'll see!' said Farnborough, with a wag of his head.
'Yes,' said Lord John, 'he's still a young man. Barely forty.'
'Barely forty! _They_ believe in prolonging their youth, don't they?' said Lady Sophia to no one in particular, and with her mouth rather more full of cake than custom prescribes. 'Good thing it isn't us, ain't it, Joey?'
'For a politician forty _is_ young,' said Farnborough.
'Oh, don't I know it!' she retorted. 'I was reading the life of Randolph Churchill the other day, and I came across a paragraph of filial admiration about the hold Lord Randolph had contrived to get so early in life over the House of Commons. It occurred to me to wonder just how much of a boy Lord Randolph was at the time. I was going to count up when I was saved the trouble by coming to a sentence that said he was then "an unproved stripling of thirty-two." You shouldn't laugh. It wasn't meant sarcastic.'
'Unless you're leader of the Opposition, I suppose it's not very easy to do much while your party's out of power,' hazarded Lady John, 'is it?'
'One of the most interesting things about our coming back will be to watch Stonor,' said Farnborough.
'After all, they said he did very well with his Under Secretaryship under the last Government, didn't they?' Again Lady John appealed to the two elder men.
'And the way'--Farnborough made up for any lack of enthusiasm--'the way he handled that Balkan question!'
'All that was pure routine,' Lord John waved it aside. 'But if Stonor had ever looked upon politics as more than a game, he'd have been a power long before this.'
'Ah,' said Borrodaile, slowly, 'you go as far as that? I doubt myself if he has enough of the demagogue in him.'