It is
even more certain, however that they took the lesson as
they found it, with the quick eye for things as they are
which seems to come of looking at things as they will
be, and with just that humorous comment about the splash.
It would be misleading to say that they were humbled; I
doubt whether they even felt their relativity, whether
they ever dropped consciously, there in the Bloomsbury
hotel, into their places in the great scale of London.
Observing the scale, recognizing it, they held themselves
unaffected by it; they kept, in a curious, positive way,
the integrity of what they were and what they had come
for; they maintained their point of view. So much must
be conceded. The Empire produces a family resemblance,
but here and there, when oceans intervene, a different
mould of the spirit.
Wallingham certainly invited them to dinner one Sunday,
in a body, an occasion which gave one or two of them some
anxiety until they found that it was not to be adorned
by the ladies of the family. Tricorne was there, President
of the Board of Trade, and Fleming, who held the
purse-strings of the United Kingdom, two Ministers whom
Wallingham had asked because they were supposed to have
open minds--open, that is to say, for purposes of
assimilation. Wallingham considered, and rightly, that
he had done very well for the deputation in getting these
two.
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