“Have not the remotest idea; never saw him before. Barron is speaking to him; he will tell us. I say, Barron, who is your friend?”
“That is Ferrars!”
“Ferrars! who is he?”
“One of our best men. If all our fellows had fought like him against the Reform Bill, that infernal measure would never have been carried.”
“Oh! ah! I remember something now,” said the young M.P., “but anything that happened before the election of ‘32 I look upon as an old almanack.”
However, notwithstanding the first and painful impression of strangers and strangeness, when a little time had elapsed Ferrars found many friends, and among the most distinguished present. Nothing could be more hearty than their greeting, and he had not been in the room half an hour before he had accepted an invitation to dine that very day with Lord Pomeroy.
It was a large and rather miscellaneous party, but all of the right kidney. Some men who had been cabinet ministers, and some who expected to be; several occupiers in old days of the secondary offices; both the whips, one noisy and the other mysterious; several lawyers of repute who must be brought into parliament, and some young men who had distinguished themselves in the reformed house and whom Ferrars had never seen before. “It is like old days,” said the husband of Zenobia to Ferrars, who sate next to him; “I hope it will float, but we shall know nothing till Peel comes.”
“He will have difficulty with his cabinet so far as the House of Commons is concerned,” said an old privy councillor “They must have seats, and his choice is very limited.”
“He will dissolve,” said the husband of Zenobia. “He must.”
“Wheugh!” said the privy councillor, and he shrugged his shoulders.