“WHAT is that little man with the soul like a wet umbrella, that somebody has left in a corner, doing?” inquired the lovely, though scarcely visible, presence that had unexpectedly materialised the night before in the house of the Prime Minister of Samaria.

“Hush,” whispered his conductor, the utterly outraged Private Secretary, “hush, they will hear you.”

“Have no fear,” said the radiant creature, looking carefully at the faces of the assembled Council, “my voice is of the kind that does not reach their ears. Therefore tell me what he is doing?”

“He is keeping minutes,” said the Secretary, a little sullenly.

“Why does he do that?” inquired the angel. “Were I in his place I would shoo them on their way like a hen-yard full of hens.”

“You do not understand,” said the Secretary; “he is keeping a record of what is happening.”“But how does he know?” inquired the angel.

“By listening to what these gentlemen say,” replied the Secretary.

“Dear me,” said the angel, “if that is his only source of information I see that I must help him,” and he walked across the Council chamber to the side of the luckless clerk, gently disregarding the frenzied gestures of the Private Secretary.

The Clerk had made the following entry in a neat flowing hand on a handsome sheet of thick white paper.

“The Prime Minister drew the Council’s attention to the difficulties presented by the Poets’ Birth (Prevention) Bill. The object, as his colleagues knew, was to secure that in future poets should be made (if possible by publicity) and not born. Everybody agreed that democracy should have self-made poets, that the pretensions of birth must cease. At the same time it could not be denied that poets insisted on being born. It would be within his colleagues’ recollection that a number of poets had been made in the recent list of honours. They were, he was happy to say, perfect in every respect except that they did not write poetry. For his part he preferred that kind of poet, but it could not be denied that the opponents of the measure were making great play with this. He asked for the views of his colleagues.

“The Minister of Higher Education asked what poetry was?

“The Minister of Commerce entirely agreed.

“The Master of the Weasels thought that there was much in what had been said.

“The Senior Almoner had had a letter from a very respectable washerwoman in his constituency. She complained that there was a poet who wore soft collars. He did not wish to press the point, but popular feeling could not be neglected.

“The Keeper of the Conscience took the view that the time was ripe for action. Several members of the Council concurred.

“The Prime Minister, summing up, said that he was glad to find his colleagues unanimous in supporting the course he had proposed. The division was likely to be a close one. He especially appealed to Lord Albatross.”

At this point the angel took possession of the Clerk’s mind, and with a queer click the faces of the men round the table were rolled up like green railway carriage blinds, and their minds became visible, working rather like electric light studs being pressed off and on. The Clerk continued to write the minutes: “Not that Lord Albatross cared, but his stud would fidget his neck, and he couldn’t be expected to listen to the Prime Minister’s neat periods with a rasping stud. The other eighteen fellers probably had got their studs right. Anyhow, judgin’ by their serious looks, they had better things than studs to think about. Queer thing how complete they all looked—if you know what I mean. Couldn’t imagine them ever having not worn morning coats or neat grey tweeds and a sort of sewn-up-and-sent-home-hoping-it’s-to-your-complete-satisfaction look. Except ‘Conky,’ the Lord High Wig. ‘Conky’ was dressed up like himself—a sort of suit consistin’ of a heavy jowled face, glass eyes, looming stomach and the rest. Joke if they found him and ‘Conky’ out and gave them the push for having sneaked into the room during a Council.” Albatross suppressed a chuckle.

The P.M. looked at him coldly. “Damn the fellow with his aristocratic sharpness. There he sat looking like a stuck pig, and all the time he had followed every word and seen through the whole caboodle. That’s the worst of mixing classes. They’ve got their own cold, fishy way of nosing through the water, and snap—they’re on the fly, when you thought them fast asleep. They’d never understand each other—never. Here was he not caring a row of beans (or has-beens, he added, viciously looking round) as to what the result of the division would be. What he wanted was friendship. He wanted them all to see that he wasn’t just the best thing in talking machines that had been invented. Groping to them he was—to their hearts. Well, why not? They had hearts, hadn’t they? And just when he was stretching out a hand to gather in the strings this cold fellow fetches out his knife of laughter. Not human, that’s what was wrong. Born like a little Eastern idol. He should have stuck to his own lot. There was Crayfish, the Senior Almoner. He sympathised. He stood shoulder to shoulder. Damn! getting the rhetoric into his thoughts! Still Crayfish would pull it through, if only to irritate Albatross and Lord Conkers. If he didn’t, well he’d get back to humans at last. He had a right, hadn’t he, to be a man.

“The Minister of Commerce was drawing one O after another on his pad. Who did the perfect circle? Forget my own name next. Just ask old Crayfish—only chap in the room who’s ever read anything except The Morning News—begging Albatross’ pardon—and The Blue ’Un. Silly to have got cluttered up with this gang, and yet what a wonder the P.M. was. Never felt a thing in his life. Could make a bed—mattress and all—out of two adjectives and a noun. Yes, and the right adjectives too—right in a popular sense that is. But as a literary proposition, O Lord! How odd, though, to live by words that weren’t words so much as gestures and nothing behind them. Like Hume—association of well, not ideas, but penny plain dressed up as tuppeny coloured. Like a series of ballads hawked by a man in the street hung all round him and no man in the middle. Funny how not being a man he gets real men like old Crayfish for instance. That’s the one—no rhetoric for him. Look at his tense simple eyes. He thinks only of what’s best and loyalty, and if sincerity can get the damned thing through he’ll do it. Now I wonder if he does know who did the perfect circle?...”

The blinds clicked down again. The Master of the Weasels was standing over the Clerk pouring some brandy down his throat. The Clerk blinked his eyes and recovered suddenly. “I’m sorry, sir, I must have fainted. I’m afraid that I’ve missed part of the discussion.” “It doesn’t matter,” said the Prime Minister, looking at the notes, from which the angelic interpolations had disappeared. “Nobody said a thing while you were off.” “Oh,” said the Clerk happily, “then nothing happened. Will you sign the minutes?”