d then,
if charges should be made, he would make them specifically, and as a
citizen contend for the right.

It is difficult to restrain one's pen in dealing with a hero, but it is
not too much to say that Mr. Crewe impressed many of the country members
favourably. How, indeed, could he help doing so? His language was
moderate, his poise that of a man of affairs, and there was a look
in his eye and a determination in his manner that boded ill for the
Northeastern if he should, after weighing the facts, decide that they
ought to be flagellated. His friendship with Mr. Flint and the suspicion
that he might be inclined to fancy Mr. Flint's daughter would not
influence him in the least; of that many of his hearers were sure. Not
a few of them were invited to dinner at the Duncan house, and shown the
library and the conservatory.

"Walk right in," said Mr. Crewe. "You can't hurt the flowers unless you
bump against the pots, and if you walk straight you can't do that. I
brought the plants down from my own hothouse in Leith. Those are French
geraniums--very hard to get. They're double, you see, and don't
look like the scrawny things you see in this country. Yes (with a
good-natured smile), I guess they do cost something. I'll ask my
secretary what I paid for that plant. Is that dinner, Waters? Come right
in, gentlemen, we won't wait for ceremony."

Whereupon the delegation would file into the dining room in solemn
silence behind the imperturbable Waters, with dubious glances at Mr.
Waters' imperturbable understudy in green and buff and silver buttons.
Honest red hands, used to milking at five o'clock in the morning,
and hands not so red that measured dry goods over rural counters for
insistent female customers fingered in some dismay what seemed an
inexplicable array of table furniture.

"It don't make any difference which fork you take," said the
good-natured owner of this palace of luxury, "only I shouldn't advise
you to use one for the soup you wouldn't get much of it--what? Yes, this
house suits me very well. It was built by old man Duncan, you know,
and his daughter married an Italian nobleman and lives in a castle. The
State ought to buy the house for a governor's mansion. It's a disgrace
that our governor should have to live in the Pelican Hotel, and
especially in a room next to that of the chief counsel of the
Northeastern, with only a curtain and a couple of folding doors
between."

"That's right," declared an