"They should have come to you in the drawing-room, only those children are so fond of their liberty that they prefer the nursery, where they can torment Alice to their hearts' content, to anything like restraint in the drawing-room. What a litter the place is in! I do wish we could get a nurse."
"I must see Miss Melville, too, and bid her goodbye," said Brandon.
"She is in the housekeeper's room," said Harriett. "As you have been introduced by Emily into the nursery, perhaps you will let me take you there."
"Goodbye, then, Miss Alice," said Brandon.
"Goodbye," said she.
Brandon could not drop a word of his intention to Jane, for Harriett Phillips was at his elbow when he made his adieu; but somehow Elsie treasured up his parting looks, and embarrassed expressions, with as much fidelity as if he had made an open declaration of love. Many a woman's heart lives long on such slight food as this. And the next day, Brandon was on board, and soon on the high seas, on his way back to his sheep-stations and his troubles.
Chapter XIV.
Francis Hogarth's Canvass And Election
There can be little doubt that Jane Melville was a good deal influenced in her decision as to the position she ought to hold with Francis by the letter she had received from Tom Lowrie on the morning of the day in which her cousin had betrayed to her more unmistakably than ever the state of his own heart. It was something more for him to give up, and, as I have said before, she rather overestimated both the importance of the public duty and the amount of success in it which Francis was likely to attain to. It might seem to impartial observers rather Utopian to hope and expect some regeneration of the political world of Great Britain from the return of an intelligent country gentleman of independent and original principles, for a few obscure Scottish burghs, to be one of an assembly of six hundred and fifty-eight legislators, but it is from such Utopianism, felt, not in one instance, but in many, that the atmosphere of politics, both in Great Britain and in Australia, can be cleared and purified. When people, whether as electors or candidates (or, as in the case of Jane Melville, even those who are neither), take an exaggerated view of the trouble, expense, and annoyance attending the discharge of public duty, and form a low estimate of the good that each honest energetic individual can do to his country by using every means in his power to secure good government, to promote public spirit, and to raise the standard of political morality, the country is on the decline. It may grow rich, it may increase in national prosperity, but, as a nation, it wants the soul of national life and national freedom. I prefer Jane Melville's rather unreasonable hopes to the pusillanimous fears—the LASSEZ FAIRE policy of those who think they know the world far better, and who believe the game of public life is not worth the cost of the candle that lights it up.