"You are going to teach in the Sunday-school!" I cried with sudden conviction, flinging myself on my knees beside my dear old hero.
"Get up," he said, "and don't be an idiot. I'm going to run for the Local Board; and if I get on, as I think I shall, I'll raise Cain in this place. We're all asleep here."
The Chislehurst air, which is bracing, had simply taken years off my grandfather's life, and I was conscious that he would make himself heard on the Local Board pretty loudly if they really elected him. This, I doubted not, was what he meant by the peculiar idiom that he would raise Cain. The old man was always picking up new expressions now. His refined, old-world diction had almost entirely departed from his tongue.
CHAPTER VII.
"VOTE FOR DOLPHIN."
"The truth is," said grandpapa, "that I have got to know some of the shop people here. Not the stuck-up cads who live in the big houses by night and sneak up to London to sell boots and beer and underclothing by day; not the purse-proud rubbish that sticks 'Esquire' after its name without any right; but genuine people, who live over their shops in Chislehurst, and sell boots and beer and underclothing openly, and don't mind admitting it. Mr. Lomax, our butcher, is proposing me, and Rogers, the landlord of the Eight Bells Inn, has seconded my nomination. I'm going to write an address to the electors, and leave no stone unturned to get in."
"Is it worth while, my dearest?" I ventured to ask.
"Of course it's worth while," he answered testily. "You're always nagging at me in a quiet way to use my precious time; and when I undertake a big enterprise like this you throw cold water on it. And another thing: it's rather doubtful taste your questioning my actions at all. I look sixty and I feel sixty, but I am a hundred and four and your grandfather. Don't let appearances make you forget that. Rogers says I'm safe to get in. Then I shall wake this place up a bit, and say a thing or two that wants saying."
He had Mr. Rogers and his wife and daughter in to dine. "Socially they are nothing," my grandpapa admitted; "but when you're running for a public appointment you must be all things to all men, and not disdain to make use of mere canaille."
Mr. Rogers was a very vulgar, plain-spoken man, and his wife had caught his manner. Their daughter I liked less than them. She allowed herself to worry too much over her parents' ignorance. She corrected their grammar openly; shivered ostentatiously when they dropped an "h" or inserted the aspirate unexpectedly; told them plainly where to use a fork when habit and inclination led them to employ a knife, and so forth. After the meal we went to the drawing-room, and when her mother had gone to sleep in a corner, Miss Rogers told me that her parents were a source of great sorrow to her. They had given her an education of exceptional thoroughness and gentility; which was weak of them, because it enabled her to see their shortcomings, but had not made her a lady or anything like one. She was called Marie--christened Mary no doubt--and she was engaged to a life insurance agent in a fair way of business--so he said.