hurt."

"May I have the pleasure to learn this lady's name?" asked Lord William
very politely, turning to the old Squire.

"She's just an eccentric body, my Lord," said he; "and, I'm sorry to say,
a violent enemy to your Lordship's cause."

"Hoity-me-toity!" says Kitty. "I'm Christian Lebow, that used to be
Bottrell: which means that your forefathers and mine, my Lord, came over
to England together, like the Macanns and the Martins, though maybe some
time before, and not in a cattle-boat. No enemy am I to your Lordship,
nor to the Major here, as I'll prove any day you choose to drink a dish of
tea with me or to taste my White Ale; but only to the ill company you keep
with these Martins and Newtes, that have robbed sixty honest men of their
votes and given one to me that can't use it. I can't use it to keep you
out of Parliament-house. I would if I could--honest fighting between
gentlefolks; but I may use it before the Election's over to make these
rogues laugh on the wrong side of their faces."

She used to say afterwards that the words came into her mouth like
prophesying: but I believe she just spoke out in her temper, as women
will. At any rate, Lord William smiled and bowed, and said he,
"The Major and I will certainly do ourselves the pleasure of calling and
tasting your ale, Mrs. Lebow."

"The recipe is three hundred years old," said Kitty, and swept him a
curtsey, the like of which for stateliness you don't see nowadays: it
wants practice and sea-room. And all her eight daughters curtsied to the
daps behind her in a half-moon, to the delight of Major Dyngwall, that had
been studying Lally the youngest (which is short for Eulalia), through his
eyeglass. And with that, to the admiration of the multitude, they faced
about and went sailing up the street.

III.

Well, I suppose in the heat of the fight--the nomination taking place a
few days afterwards, and the struggle being a mighty doubtful one, for all
the trick of the Rating List, against which the Tories had sent up an
appeal--Lord William forgot all about his promise to call and taste Mrs.
Lebow's White Ale. It came into his mind of a sudden on the day before
the Election, being Sunday morning, and he breakfasting with the Major and
half a dozen of their supporters up at Tregoose, where old Squire Martin
kept open house for the Whigs right through the contest.

"Plague take it!" says he, running his eye down the Voters' List between
his