My services
to the Conservative Party in Billsbury are well-known. I can safely
say that no man has, during the last ten years, worked harder than I
have to promote Conservative interests, and for a smaller reward. My
exertions at the last election brought on a violent attack of malarial
fever, which laid me up for some months, and from which I still
suffer. The shaky character of my hand-writing attests the sufferings
I have gone through, and the shattered condition of my bodily health
at the present moment. I lost my situation as head-clerk in the Export
Department of the Ironmongers' Association, and found myself, at the
age of forty, compelled to begin life again with a wife and three
children. Everything I have turned my hand to has failed, and I am in
dire want. May I ask you, under these circumstances, to be so good
as to advance me L500 for a few months. I will give any security you
like. Perhaps I might repay some part of the loan by doing work for
you during the election. This must be a small matter to a wealthy
and generous man like you. To me it is a matter of life and death.
Anxiously awaiting your early and favourable reply, and begging you to
keep this application a secret,

I remain, Sir, Yours, faithfully, HENRY PIDGIN.

That sounded heart-breaking, but I happened to know that Mr. PIDGIN's
"malarial fever" was nothing but _delirium tremens_, brought on by
a prolonged course of drunkenness. Hence his shaky handwriting, &c.
BLISSOP had warned me against him. Wrote back that, in view of the
Corrupt Practices Act, it was impossible for me to relieve individual
cases.

Called on the PENFOLDS this afternoon. They are up from Billsbury
for their stay in London, and have got a house in Eaton Square. To
my surprise found Mrs. BELLAMY and MARY there. That was awkward,
especially as MARY looked at me, as I thought, very meaningly, and
asked me if I didn't think SOPHY PENFOLD sweetly pretty. I muttered
something about preferring a darker type of beauty (MARY's hair is as
black as my hat), to which MARY replied that perhaps, after all, that
kind of pink and white beauty with hair like tow _was_ rather insipid.
The BELLAMYS it seems met the PENFOLDS at a dinner last week, and
the girls struck up a friendship, this call being the result. Young
PENFOLD, whom I had never seen before, was there and was infernally
attentive to MARY. He's in the 24th Lancers, and looks like a barber's
block. Mrs. BELLAMY said to me, "I