er?"

Milligan was a demagogue who had twice unsuccessfully attempted to get
into Parliament in the Labour interest.

"Have you ever heard him?"

"Heaven forbid!" said I in my pride.

"Then come. He's speaking in the Hall of the Lambeth Biblical Society."

I was tempted, as I wanted company. In spite of my high resolve to
out-Ishmael Ishmael, I could not kill a highly developed gregarious
instinct. I also wanted a text for an article. But I wanted my dinner
still more. Campion condemned the idea of dinner.

"You can have a cold supper," he roared, "like the rest of us."

I yielded. Campion dragged me helpless to a tram at the top of Vauxhall
Bridge Road.

"It will do Your Mightiness good to mingle with the proletariat," he
grinned.

I did not tell him that I had been mingling with it in this manner
for some time past or that I repudiated the suggestion of its benign
influence. I entered the tram meekly. As soon as we were seated, he
began:

"I bet you won't guess what I've done with your thousand pounds. I'll
give you a million guesses."

As I am a poor conjecturer, I put on a blank expression and shook my
head. He waited for an instant, and then shouted with an air of triumph:

"I've founded a prize, my boy--a stroke of genius. I've called it by
your name. 'The de Gex Prize for Housewives.' I didn't bother you about
it as I knew you were in a world of worry. But just think of it.
An annual prize of thirty pounds--practically the interest--for
housewives!"

His eyes flashed in his enthusiasm; he brought his heavy hand down on my
knee.

"Well?" I asked, not electrified by this announcement.

"Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "I throw the competition open to the
women in the district, with certain qualifications, you know--I look
after all that. They enter their names by a given date and then they
start fair. The woman who keeps her home tidiest and her children
cleanest collars the prize. Isn't it splendid?"

I agreed. "How many competitors?"

"Forty-three. And there they are working away, sweeping their floors and
putting up clean curtains and scrubbing their children's noses till they
shine like rubies and making their homes like little Dutch pictures. You
see, thirty pounds is a devil of a lot of money for poor people. As one
mother of a large family said to me, 'With that one could bury them all
quite beautiful.'"

"You're a wonderful fellow," said I, somewhat enviously.

He gave an awkward lau