“It seems to me logical.”
“That’s the French notion—c’est lodgique!”
Tuckham’s pronunciation caused Cecilia to level her eyes at him passingly.
“By the way,” said Colonel Halkett, “there are lots of horrors in the paper to-day; wife kickings, and starvations—oh, dear me! and the murder of a woman: two columns to that.”
“That, the Tory reaction is responsible for!” said Tuckham, rather by way of a joke than a challenge.
Beauchamp accepted it as a challenge. Much to the benevolent amusement of Mr. Austin and Colonel Halkett, he charged the responsibility of every crime committed in the country, and every condition of misery, upon the party which declined to move in advance, and which therefore apologized for the perpetuation of knavery, villany, brutality, injustice, and foul dealing.
“Stick to your laws and systems and institutions, and so long as you won’t stir to amend them, I hold you accountable for that long newspaper list daily.”
He said this with a visible fire of conviction.
Tuckham stood bursting at the monstrousness of such a statement.
He condensed his indignant rejoinder to: “Madness can’t go farther!”