inds me that the crowd specially cheered my white Balbriggans.
They are out of date, but I could never fancy my legs in anything but
white."

"What on earth are you reading?"

"The local paper--Opposition. Haven't you seen it? There's a whole
column in verse about you, Elphinstone; hits you off to a hair, and none
so badly written. I'd a mind to show it to the Countess and Lady Mary,
but slipped it under the table cloth and at the last moment forgot it in
your eloquence. You really must listen--"

'Sir Elphinstone Breward
He rang for his steward,
And "Damme," said he, looking up from his letters,
This side of the county
That feeds on my bounty
's forgotten all proper respect of its betters.'

"The devil!" interrupted Sir Elphinstone. "It's that dirty little
Radical, Wrightson."

"You recognise the style? It gets neater, to my thinking, as it goes
on--"

'Agitators and pillagers
Stir up my villagers--
Worst of those fellows, so easily led!
Some haven't food enough,
Else it ain't good enough,
Others object to sleep three in a bed.'

'Deuce take their gratitude!
"Life"--that's the attitude--
"Dullish and hard, on the parish half-crown!"
Dull? Give 'em circuses!
Hard? Ain't there work'uses?
What _can_ they see to attract 'em to town?'

"--Neat, in its way," commented Miss Sally, pausing.

"Neat? _I_ call it subversive and damnable!"

"Listen! The next is a stinger--"

'Something quite recent, now:
"Drainage ain't decent," now:
Damme, when _was_ it? I've known, if you please,
Old tenants, better ones,
Crimean veterans--
Never heard _they_ required w.c.'s--'

"My _dear_ Sally!"

"I read you the thing as it's printed," said Miss Sally, with another
liquid chuckle.

["Ain't it just 'eavingly?" whispered Tilda below, clutching the boy's
arm while she listened.

"What?"

"The voice of 'er. If I could on'y speak words that way!"]

"He goes on," pursued Miss Sally, "to tell how you and Saunders--that's
your new bailiff's name, is it not?--cooked up this woman's race between
you as a step towards saving the Empire. The language is ribald in
places, I allow; but I shouldn't greatly wonder if that, more or less,
is how it happened. And any way I've come to the rescue, and kept the
Imperial Ham in the family."

"I have sometimes thought, Sally--if you will forgive my putting it
brutall