“I can’t understand that young lady,” said Julius. “She was very friendly when first we met her; but now she seems absolutely repellant.”
“Tant mieux,” Raymond
“They seem inclined to take up all the good works in hand,” said Jenny. “By the bye, what is all this story about Raymond affronting Wil’sbro’ by stirring up their gutters? Papa has been quite in a state of mind for fear they should take offence and bring in Mr. Moy.”
“Julius only thinks I have not stirred the gutters enough,” said Raymond. “And after all, it is not I, but Whitlock. I was in hopes that matters might have been properly looked after if Whitlock had been chosen mayor this year; but, somehow, a cry was got up that he was going to bring down a sanitary commission, and put the town to great expense; and actually, this town-council have been elected because they are opposed to drainage.”
“And Truelove, the grocer, is mayor?”
“Yes; one of the most impracticable men I ever encountered. One can’t get him so much as to understand anything. Now Briggs does understand, only he goes by £ s. d.”
“Posterity has done nothing for me, and I will do nothing for posterity, is his principle,” said Julius. “Moreover, he is a Baptist.”
“No chance for the Church in his time,” said Jenny.
“There’s the less harm in that,” said Raymond, “that the plan is intolerable. Briggs’s nephew took the plan of what he calls a German Rat-house, for the town-hall, made in gilt gingerbread; and then adapted the church to a beautiful similarity. If that could be staved off by waiting for the bazaar, or by any other means, there might be a chance of something better. So poor Fuller thinks, though he is not man enough to speak out at once.”
“Then the bazaar is really fixed?”