“Daubing again, I presume?” said his lordship, snappishly.
“Yes,” said Ferdinand, holding his cigar at arm's-length and flicking at the ash with his little finger, “daubing again.”
His lordship felt the tone and gesture to be irritating and offensive.
“Joseph Beaker,” he said, “take the ladder to the stables. I have done with you for to-day. Upon my word, Ferdinand,” he continued, when Joseph had shambled through the gateway with the ladder, “I think you answer me with very little consideration, for—in short, I think your manner a little wanting in—I don't care to be addressed in that way, Ferdinand.”
“I am sorry, sir,” said Ferdinand. “I did not mean to be disrespectful. You spoke of my daubing. I desired to admit the justice of the term. Nothing more, I assure you.”
His lordship, in his irritated mood, felt the tone to-be more irritating and offensive than before.
“I tell you candidly, Ferdinand, that I do not approve of the manner in which you spend your time here. If you imagine that you can walk over the course here without an effort you are very much mistaken. I take this idleness and indifference very ill, sir, very ill indeed, and if we are beaten I shall know on whom the blame will rest. The times are not what they were, Ferdinand, and constitutional principles are in danger.”
“Really, sir,” returned Ferdinand, “one can't be electioneering all the year round. There can't be a dissolution before the autumn. When the time comes I will work as hard as you can ask me to do.”
“Pooh, pooh!” said his lordship, irritably. “I don't ask you to spout politics. I ask you to show yourself to these people as a serious and thoughtful fellow, and not as a mere dauber of canvas and scraper of fiddles. You come here,” he went on, irritated as much by his own speech as by the actual circumstances of the case, “as if you were courting a constituency of dilettanti, and expected to walk in by virtue of your little artistic graces. They don't want a man like that. They won't have a man like that. They're hard-headed fellows, let me tell you. These South Stafford fellows are the very deuce, let me tell you, for knowing all about Free-trade, and the Cheap Loaf, and the National Debt.”
“Very well, sir,” said Ferdinand, laughing, “I reform. Instead of carrying easel and porte-couleur, Harvey shall go about with a copy of 'The Wealth of Nations,' and when a voter passes I'll stop and consult the volume and make a note. But l'homme sérieux is not the only man for election times. I'll wager all I am ever likely to make out of politics that I have secured a vote this afternoon, though I have done nothing more than offer a farmer's wife a little artistic advice about the choice of a bonnet. I told her that yellow was fatal to that charming complexion, and advised blue. Old Holland is proud of his young wife, and I hooked him to a certainty.”