"She shall come and live here, if you like," the Duchess had said in answer to a request from her husband on his new friend's behalf,--"I've no doubt she will be willing." The place was not crowded as it had been before; but still about thirty guests sat down to dinner daily, and Locock, Millepois, and Mrs.
Pritchard were all kept hard at work.

Nor was our Duchess idle.
She was always making up the party,--meaning the coalition,--doing something to strengthen the buttresses, writing little letters to little people, who, little as they were, might become big by amalgamation.

"One has always to be binding one's fagot," she said to Mrs.Finn, having read her Aesop not altogether in vain.

"Where should we have been without you ?" she had whispered to Sir Orlando Drought when that gentleman was leaving Gatherum at the termination of his second visit.

She had particularly disliked Sir Orlando, and was aware that her husband had on this occasion been hardly as gracious as he should have been, in true policy, to so powerful a colleague.
Her husband had been peculiarly shy of Sir Orlando since the day on which they had walked together in the park,--and, consequently, the Duchess had whispered to him.