use spaniel, also stretched out with
small choice of room, looked from between his paws at the usurper of
the rug with silent but strong objection.

Rosamond bringing Lydgate his cup of tea, he threw down the paper, and
said to Will, who had started up and gone to the table--

"It's no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw:
they only pick the more holes in his coat in the 'Trumpet.'"

"No matter; those who read the 'Pioneer' don't read the 'Trumpet,'"
said Will, swallowing his tea and walking about. "Do you suppose the
public reads with a view to its own conversion? We should have a
witches' brewing with a vengeance then--'Mingle, mingle, mingle,
mingle, You that mingle may'--and nobody would know which side he was
going to take."

"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the
opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring
another member out of the bag at the right moment."

"There's no harm in trying. It's good to have resident members."

"Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient word
in a curt tone.

"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and
shaking his curls; "and they are kept on their best behavior in the
neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good
things on his estate that he never would have done but for this
Parliamentary bite."

"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous
decision. "He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see
that at the Hospital. Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives
him."

"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will.
"He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their
mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man--they only
want a vote."

"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw--crying up a
measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a
part of the very disease that wants curing."

"Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land
without knowing it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when
he had not thought of a question beforehand.

"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of
hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it
whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to
carry it. You go against r