The Sea Lady of course said nothing.
“We’ll give ’em a jolly good fight for it, anyhow,” said Mr. Bunting.
“Well, I hope we shall do that,” said Chatteris.
“We shall do more than that,” said Adeline.
“Oh, yes!” said Betty Bunting, “we shall.”
“I knew they would let him,” said Adeline.
“If they had any sense,” said Mr. Bunting.
Then came a pause, and Mr. Bunting was emboldened to lift up his voice and utter politics. “They are getting sense,” he said. “They are learning that a party must have men, men of birth and training. Money and the mob—they’ve tried to keep things going by playing to fads and class jealousies. And the Irish. And they’ve had their lesson. How? Why,—we’ve stood aside. We’ve left ’em to faddists and fomenters—and the Irish. And here they are! It’s a revolution in the party. We’ve let it down. Now we must pick it up again.”
He made a gesture with his fat little hand, one of those fat pink little hands that appear to have neither flesh nor bones inside them but only sawdust or horse-hair. Mrs. Bunting leaned back in her chair and smiled at him indulgently.
“It is no common election,” said Mr. Bunting. “It is a great issue.”