“Did you go to see Russell about those Iron Works, those blasted Blasting Works, as I’ve been tempted to call them. It’ll end in Chancery, I suppose.”
“Not if I can help it; and I didn’t go to town to see Russell.” Now, Mr. Russell, of Bedford Row, was the London agent of the firm of Beaumont, Son, and Storth. “You’ll never guess whom I went to see, and why. The fact is, I put in a good bit of time at the Reform Club.”
“Well, I don’t doubt they do you very well at the Reform Club. Never been beyond its august portals myself, but on general principles I should argue a cordon bleu for a chef and a cellar second only to an Emperor’s. Your true reformer who recommends vegetarianism and total abstinence, high thinking and low feeding to the general, takes uncommon good care to have the best of everything for himself.”
“Well, I only sampled a cigar and a whiskey and soda. Leatham took me to interview the Junior Whip.”
Now Mr. Leatham was the Liberal member for Huddersfield.
“And what the deuce did you want with the Liberal Whip, if I may make so free?”
“Why, what the deuce, to borrow your phrase, do people want with Liberal Whips?”
“Can’t say. No use for ’em myself, and I should have thought you hadn’t. But I can make a shrewd guess what the Junior Liberal Whip wanted with Mr. Edward Beaumont, and that’s a subscription to the party fund. Well, go ahead with your tale.”
“Well, it seems I was just the sort of man the party’s looking for. There’s to be a vacancy soon in one of the West Staffordshire Divisions—Staveley Hill’s the sitting member, a blue of the blues, you know—and the party our party, want a man well up on the Land Question to fight the seat. Now, I do rather fancy myself on the Land Question.”
“I don’t think you know a turnip from a mangel wurzel, if that’s what you call being well up on the Land Question.”