k that I could have kept my father in better order. Riversley was
hearing new and strange reports of him. But how could I at Chippenden
thwart his proceedings in London? Besides, he was serving me
indefatigably.

It can easily be imagined what description of banter he had to meet and
foil.

'This gentleman is obliging enough to ask me, "How about the Royal Arms?"
If in his extreme consideration he means to indicate my Arms, I will
inform him that they are open to him; he shall find entertainment for man
and beast; so he is doubly assured of a welcome.'

Questioned whether he did not think he was entitled to be rated at the
value of half-a-crown, he protested that whatever might be the sum of his
worth, he was pure coin, of which neither party in Chippenden could
accuse the silver of rubbing off; and he offered forthwith an impromptu
apologue of a copper penny that passed itself off for a crown-piece, and
deceived a portion of the country: that was why (with a wave of the arm
over the Hipperdon faction) it had a certain number of backers; for
everybody on whom the counterfeit had been foisted, praised it to keep it
in the currency.

'Now, gentlemen, I apprehend that Chippenden is not the pocket-borough
for Hipperdon coin. Back with him to the Mint! and, with your permission,
we will confiscate the first syllable of his name, while we consign him
to oblivion, with a hip, hip, hip, hurrah for Richmond!'

The cheers responded thunderingly, and were as loud when he answered a
'How 'bout the Dauphin?' by saying that it was the Tory hotel, of which
he knew nothing.

'A cheer for old Roy!' Edbury sang out.

My father checked the roar, and turned to him.

'Marquis of Edbury, come to the front!'

Edbury declined to budge, but the fellows round him edged aside to show
him a mark for my father's finger.

'Gentlemen, this is the young Marquis of Edbury, a member of the House of
Lords by right of his birth, born to legislate for you and me. He,
gentlemen, makes our laws. Examine him, hear him, meditate on him.'

He paused cruelly for Edbury to open his mouth. The young lord looked
confounded, and from that moment behaved becomingly.

'He might have been doing mischief to-morrow,' my father said to me, and
by letting me conceive his adroitness a matter of design, comforted me
with proofs of intelligent power, and made me feel less the melancholy
conjunction of a piece of mechanism and a piece of criticism, which I was
f