'Well, rather!'
'And it is quite out of the question for yourself?'
'Entirely so. Even if I thought it right, it could not be done.'
'I thought so, and told the Squire. Unlucky, for things are a good deal involved; and you would find the vicarage income handy, while as for this—why he is a mere boy!'
'So he feels himself. He is conscious of his want of experience, and it would be an infinite relief to him to see it in good hands.'
'Mrs. Fulbert and her mother declare that the Squire promised poor Fulbert to give it to her brother, Harry Shaw, whom you'll see here to-night; but he swears he did no such thing; and on the whole, I think Smiles would have a better chance—he's an obsequious chap, who has been very attentive to the old man all the winter, half their spy, half his toady. However, the Squire would never let either of them have it while there's a parson left with Underwood blood in his veins!'
All the quaint old bedrooms in this passage opened one into the other, and Felix unlocked the door between himself and Clement to communicate the information received, but it apparently took no effect.
The dinner-party was dismal and incongruous enough. Obsequious was a word that exactly depicted little, sleek, low-voiced Mr. Smiles, who though presiding at one end of the table, seemed ready to emulate Baillie M'Wheeble's posture; and the rival candidate, Mr. Henry Shaw, was a red-faced, punchy man, hardly distinguishable in appearance or manner from his farmer kindred, and, as soon became apparent, with such principles as he had, diametrically opposed to those of Clement, who, with his refined countenance and form, looked as if he belonged to some other world.
Mr. Underwood was wheeled in in his chair. He was not a man to give way, but rather to try to talk sorrow down; and the curate and Mr. Staples, knowing his humour, set county politics going, and all joined with a fervour, not to say violence, that struck the brothers as unsuitable. It was more than the Squire, between deafness and the burthen of grief, could follow; he grew abstracted, and presently rousing himself, turned to Clement to ask what had just passed at the other end of the table.
'That the bribery petition will fail, sir,' repeated Clement, bending with the naturally kind and courteous manner due to age, infirmity, and sorrow, and speaking in a clear sweet modulated tone, that evidently struck the old man more than the words.