great desire to enter a bank, and Lady Ogram put his case
before the senior partner in the chief Hollingford banking-house, who
was no other than Mr. Robb himself. Thus recommended, the boy soon had
his wish; he was admitted to a clerkship. But less than six months
proved him so unsuitable a member of the establishment that he received
notice of dismissal. Not till after this step had been taken did Lady
Ogram hear of it. She was indignant at what seemed to her a lack of
courtesy; she made inquiries, persuaded herself that her _protege_ had
been harshly dealt with, and wrote a very pungent letter to the head of
the firm. Mr. Robb did not himself reply, and the grave arguments urged
by his subordinate served nothing to mitigate Lady Ogram's wrath.
Insult had been added to injury; her ladyship straightway withdrew an
account she kept at the bank, and dispatched to the M. P. a second
letter, so forcible in its wording that it received no answer at all.

Never half-hearted in her quarrels, Lady Ogram made known to all her
acquaintances in the neighbourhood the opinion she had of Mr. Robb, and
was in no wise discouraged when it came to her ears that the banker M.
P. spoke of taking legal proceedings against her. It happened that Mr.
Robb about this time addressed an important meeting of his
constituents. His speech was not brilliant, and Lady Ogram made great
fun of the newspaper report. He reminded her, she said, of a specially
stupid organ-grinder, grinding all out of time the vulgarest and most
threadbare tunes. Henceforth, applying the name of a character in
Dickens, she spoke of Hollingford's representative as Robb the Grinder;
which, when Mr. Robb heard of it, as of course he did very soon, by no
means sweetened his disposition towards "the termagant of Rivenoak"--a
phrase he was supposed to have himself invented. "I'll grind her!"
remarked the honourable gentleman, in the bosom of his family, and
before long he found his opportunity. In the next parliamentary recess,
he again spoke at Hollingford, this time at a festal meeting of the
Conservative Club, where the gentility of town and district was well
represented. His subject was the British Aristocracy, its glories in
the past, its honours in the present, and the services it would render
in a future dark with revolutionary menace. The only passage which had
any particular meaning, or to which anyone listened, ran pretty much
thus:

"Ladies and gentleman--ha--hum--we