"It's an excellent place," said Lady Agnes coldly. "I imagine you've never been there. It's a very good place indeed. It belongs very largely to my cousin, Mrs. Dallow."
Gabriel partook of the fish, listening with interest. "But I thought we had no more pocket-boroughs."
"It's pockets we rather lack, so many of us. There are plenty of Harshes," Nick Dormer observed.
"I don't know what you mean," Lady Agnes said to Nash with considerable majesty.
Peter Sherringham also addressed him with an "Oh it's all right; they come down on you like a shot!" and the young man continued ingenuously:
"Do you mean to say you've to pay money to get into that awful place—that it's not you who are paid?"
"Into that awful place?" Lady Agnes repeated blankly.
"Into the House of Commons. That you don't get a high salary?"
"My dear Nash, you're delightful: don't leave me—don't leave me!" Nick cried; while his mother looked at him with an eye that demanded: "Who in the world's this extraordinary person?"
"What then did you think pocket-boroughs were?" Peter Sherringham asked.