"Well! Look at this!"

His excitement upset my concentration. I was trying to decipher the meaning, any meaning, in the verbatim transcript of portion of an honourable member's speech delivered an hour earlier in the august Chamber of the House of Commons.

That was my job. The Hansard reporter who had taken down the speech confessed himself flummoxed. Now it was my turn to make sense of it. I was the last in the chain of command. If it appeared in print in its present form the honourable member himself would appear to be an ass. And, as everyone knows, there are no asses in Parliament.

"I've never seen one. I've heard of them but never seen one. Look!"

I looked. He was holding a brass cylinder sort of yoke in front of my eyes. To me it could have been anything.

His eyes were dancing with delight.

"Wait till I show it to my buddies. It's an antique. Must have been part of the original wiring!"

'Twas as if he had just discovered the tomb of another Tutankamen.

He was an electrician and he had been busy installing new wiring running into the office next door, recently taken over by the Deputy Speaker of the House, Lloyd Francis.

He had been as quiet as could be until he had stumbled on this brass artifact from a lost civilization of electricians. Until then we had laboured in silence, his task to bring new light to a new office, mine to find light, any light, in the utterances of the honourable member.

He insisted that I look at the baseboard where he had made his discovery. I think he wanted an impartial witness to verify the location, time and date.

The baseboard itself had been pried loose, and he used a steel rod to remove it completely. It was then we--and I insist we both shared in the discovery--saw something that didn't belong there.

It was a package, a small rectangular package, its brown wrapping paper tied with twine.

How long it had been there? Who had hidden it there? What did it contain?

With gentle fingers I eased it out. The electrician had found his own Holy Grail, and I was determined that this should be mine.

Gently did I undo the knot, even more gently did I unfold the fragile gift wrapping shielded by the brown paper which, with the passage of years, was ready to crumble at the touch.

Inside was a box. And inside the box a bottle of perfume.

How long had it lain behind the baseboard? Why had it been placed there? Who had hidden it there? For whom had it been intended?

I looked at the photographs of my predecessors which adorned the office walls. Which one had secreted the package until the time was right to present it to the intended recipient? Or did someone else in the long ago discover the perfect hiding place?

It was a welcome interlude in my daily routine.

The electrician returned to his electricianing, the editor to his editing, and to this day the rewrapped package lies in a desk drawer, its mystery unsolved and insoluble.

The honourable member's speech? Nothing a verb, an object, and a crystal ball couldn't solve.

"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

Methinks it fitting to tell this tale in the Spring, in the month of April. Many Springs have come and gone since that carefully packaged gift was hidden behind the baseboard. If the walls on Parliament Hill could talk, what a myriad of secrets they could divulge!

But, until those walls reveal more, the photographs accompanying this story may lead some expert in perfumery to place the bottle in its proper timeframe. It was called "Poetic Dream", and the manufacturer's label still affixed to its base reads:

LEIGH PERFUMERS ESTABLISHED 1890 A DIVISION OF SHULTON, INC. HOBOKEN, N.J. MADE IN U.S.A

Alas, since it was discovered and first opened, its sweet fragrance has begun to evaporate.

By now buyer and intended recipient may be turning to dust. In a few more years a stranger will sniff the last lingering trace of perfume in the little bottle, but there will still remain the mystery of the gift not given.