The doors
were locked.
The mysteries of the Lobby are only for the initiated. Three
quarters of an hour after the division was called, the result
was known to the exoteric world. Majority for Ministers
thirty-seven! Never had the opposition made such a bad
division, and this too on their trial of strength for the
session. Everything went wrong. Lord Milford was away
without a pair. Mr Ormsby, who had paired with Mr Berners,
never came, and let his man poll; for which he was infinitely
accursed, particularly by the expectant twelve hundred a-
yearers, but not wanting anything himself, and having an
income of forty thousand pounds paid quarterly, Mr Ormsby bore
their reported indignation like a lamb.
There were several other similar or analogous mischances; the
whigs contrived to poll Lord Grubminster in a wheeled chair;
he was unconscious but had heard as much of the debate as a
good many. Colonel Fantomme on the other hand could not come
to time; the mesmerist had thrown him into a trance from which
it was fated he should never awake: but the crash of the night
was a speech made against the opposition by one of their own
men, Mr Trenchard, who voted with the government.
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