ed him he was the hope of Tattleton; and, in an evil hour, he
consented, in electioneering phrase, to contest the borough.

With his relations, who regarded Sommerset as their top branch, the
step was in high favour; and all his friends came out strong in
approbation, excepting old Tom Prior. He had been the consulting
friend and boon-companion of old Cloudesly forty years before, when
the one began to brew beer and the other to make cider. Tom's brewery
had not paid him so well as old Cloudesly's apples. He had been the
first to establish a business of the kind in Tattleton. There were
three there at the time of the election; but the townspeople still
knew him familiarly as _the_ brewer, though he had long become a
sleeping partner, having saved enough for himself and his old wife to
live on in a cottage covered with grape vines, at the end of a long
green lane in which the main street of Tattleton dwindled away. There
was, besides, a thousand pounds for Lily, the heiress-apparent,
moreover, of his interest in the brewery. Tom said 'he had no notion
of politics, being entirely given to beer; and who was right about
that there Bill he couldn't say, but he never knowed an honest man as
made money by a contested election.' Old Mrs Prior always echoed what
her husband said, besides knitting a perpetual stocking that was her
only occupation; but Tom and his wife were old people now, and in
small intimacy with the college-bred young Cloudesly, though they sat
in the same church-pew, and some thought their daughter Lily was also
a friend to our proposed member. Lily was as pretty a girl as could be
found in all Tattleton, which, together with her prospects, rather
insured admirers; but Lily took no trouble with any of them, and it
was believed that the old folks rather wished she should not be in a
hurry.

That was no wonder; for, in this fidgety world, Lily Prior was a
treasure. Nothing ever disturbed her. Her hair might go out of curl,
or her friends out of humour; her bonnet might take unbecoming fits,
as I am told bonnets sometimes do, but her equanimity remained
unruffled, and her days were spent in knitting beside her mother in
the little oak parlour, taking quiet walks, and hoeing peacefully in
her own flower-garden. Spiteful people said, that Lily was beginning
to look old-maidish, but I never saw it in her calm face. It was also
said--what didn't they say in Great Tattleton?--that her muslin dress
and crimped colla