e out to a party. They should fight a man
of their own size. I'm all limp and trampled on, and want you to protect
me."

The group moved, laughing and talking, into the drawing-room.

"Jiminy!" said Leven, stopping short behind Aldous, who was alone
conscious of the lad's indignant astonishment; "what the deuce is _he_
doing here?"

For there on the rug, with his back to the fire, stood Wharton,
surveying the party with his usual smiling _aplomb_.

"Mr. Hallin, do you know Mr. Wharton?" said Marcella.

"Mr. Wharton and I have met several times on public platforms," said
Hallin, holding out his hand, which Wharton took with effusion. Aldous
greeted him with the impassive manner, the "three finger" manner, which
was with him an inheritance--though not from his grandfather--and did
not contribute to his popularity in the neighbourhood. As for young
Leven, he barely nodded to the Radical candidate, and threw himself into
a chair as far from the fire as possible.

"Frank and I have met before to-day!" said Wharton, laughing.

"Yes, I've been trying to undo some of your mischief," said the boy,
bluntly. "I found him, Miss Boyce, haranguing a lot of men at the
dinner-hour at Tudley End--one of our villages, you know--cramming them
like anything--all about the game laws, and our misdeeds--my father's,
of course."

Wharton raised a protesting hand.

"Oh--all very well! Of course it was us you meant! Well, when he'd
driven off, I got up on a cart and had _my_ say. I asked them whether
they didn't all come out at our big shoots, and whether they didn't have
almost as much fun as we did--why! the schoolmaster and the postman come
to ask to carry cartridges, and everybody turns out, down to the
cripples!--whether they didn't have rabbits given them all the year
round; whether half of them hadn't brothers and sons employed somehow
about the game, well-paid, and well-treated; whether any man-jack of
them would be a ha'porth better off if there were no game; whether many
of them wouldn't be worse off; and whether England wouldn't be a beastly
dull place to live in, if people like him"--he pointed to Wharton--"had
the governing of it! And I brought 'em all round too. I got them
cheering and laughing. Oh! I can tell you old Dodgson'll have to take
me on. He says he'll ask me to speak for him at several places. I'm not
half bad, I declare I'm not."

"I thought they gave you a holiday task at Eton," observed Wharton,
blandly.