How many meetings did he find that he must hold in
the month? What places did he regard as his principal strongholds? She
was told that certain villages, which she named, were certain to go
Radical, whatever might be the Tory promises. As to a well-known
Conservative League, which was very strong in the country, and to which
all the great ladies, including Lady Winterbourne, belonged, was he
actually going to demean himself by accepting its support? How was it
possible to defend the bribery, buns, and beer by which it won its
corrupting way?

Altogether, a quick fire of questions, remarks, and sallies, which
Aldous met and parried as best he might, comforting himself all the time
by thought of those deeper and lonelier parts of the wood which lay
before them. At last she dropped out, half laughing, half defiant, words
which arrested him,--

"Well, I shall know what the other side think of their prospects very
soon. Mr. Wharton is coming to lunch with us to-morrow."

"Harry Wharton!" he said astonished. "But Mr. Boyce is not supporting
him. Your father, I think, is Conservative?"

One of Dick Boyce's first acts as owner of Mellor, when social
rehabilitation had still looked probable to him, had been to send a
contribution to the funds of the League aforesaid, so that Aldous had
public and conspicuous grounds for his remark.

"Need one measure everything by politics?" she asked him a little
disdainfully. "Mayn't one even feed a Radical?"

He winced visibly a moment, touched in his philosopher's pride.

"You remind me," he said, laughing and reddening--"and justly--that an
election perverts all one's standards and besmirches all one's morals.
Then I suppose Mr. Wharton is an old friend?"

"Papa never saw him before last week," she said carelessly. "Now he
talks of asking him to stay some time, and says that, although he won't
vote for him, he hopes that he will make a good fight."

Raeburn's brow contracted in a puzzled frown.

"He will make an excellent fight," he said rather shortly. "Dodgson
hardly hopes to get in. Harry Wharton is a most taking speaker, a very
clever fellow, and sticks at nothing in the way of promises. Ah, you
will find him interesting, Miss Boyce! He has a co-operative farm on his
Lincolnshire property. Last year he started a Labour paper--which I
believe you read. I have heard you quote it. He believes in all that you
hope for--great increase in local government and communal control--the