ngry with the governor,
which is a kind of thing I don't like at all."

"I can understand that when he's angry with you, you shouldn't like
it."

"I don't mind that half so much. He'll come round. However unjust he
may be now, at the moment, he's the last man in the world to do an
injustice in his will. I have thorough confidence in him. But I find
myself driven into hostility to him by a conviction that he won't let
me take any real step in life, till my life has been half frittered
away."

"You're thinking of Parliament."

"Of course I am. I don't say you ain't an Englishman, but you are not
quite enough of an Englishman to understand what Parliament is to
us."

"I hope to be,--some of these days," said Lopez.

"Perhaps you may. I won't say but what you may get yourself educated
to it when you've been married a dozen years to an English wife, and
have half-a-dozen English children of your own. But, in the meantime,
look at my position. I am twenty-eight years old."

"I am four years your senior."

"It does not matter a straw to you," continued Everett. "But a few
years are everything with me. I have a right to suppose that I may be
able to represent the county,--say in twenty years. I shall probably
then be the head of the family and a rich man. Consider what a
parliamentary education would be to me! And then it is just the life
for which I have laid myself out, and in which I could make myself
useful. You don't sympathise with me, but you might understand me."

"I do both. I think of going into the House myself."

"You!"

"Yes; I do."

"You must have changed your ideas very much then within the last
month or two."

"I have changed my ideas. My one chief object in life is, as you
know, to marry your sister; and if I were a Member of Parliament I
think that some difficulties would be cleared away."

"But there won't be an election for the next three years at any
rate," said Everett Wharton, staring at his friend. "You don't mean
to keep Emily waiting for a dissolution?"

"There are occasional vacancies," said Lopez.

"Is there a chance of anything of that kind falling in your way?"

"I think there is. I can't quite tell you all the particulars because
other people are concerned, but I don't think it improbable that I
may be in the House before--; well, say in three months' time."

"In three months' time!" exclaimed Everett, whose mouth was watering
at the prospects of his friend. "That is what