Whereupon he thanked Sir Joseph and the Ex-Ambassador with great sincerity, and went his way along Pall Mall; and as he did this he was just the happiest young man in all the great Metropolis. It was a genuine inspiration that Mary should make the speeches. He would attend to the goal-kicking department all right. He would go into strict training, knock off tobacco, lead the life of an anchorite. And when he found himself in Parliament as a full-blown Rag, he would be able to say that she had done it all.
Hitherto Mr. Philip had not been encumbered with anything so superfluous as political convictions. He had known in a dim kind of way that the friends of his youth had been Waggers. Without the Waggers, he had always been given to understand there would have been no turn-up with the Boers in South Africa. He had borne a humble part in that little affair, along with the rest of his friends; and the best he could say for it was that he had found it rather an overrated amusement. But without the Waggers, so he understood, there would not have been fair play for everybody.
However, this was the only good thing he knew about the Waggers. His father was a Wagger, of course, like everybody else’s father was; but if you have quarrelled with your father, there is all the less reason to stick to the same school of political thought. But Mary it was who had really converted him, and had made him go into Parliament. She declared herself to be an absolutely ferocious Rag-Tag-and-Bobtail, and that, of course, in the present state of the domestic firmament, was quite enough for Mr. Philip.
The Rags, as Mary expounded their faith, were the party of Progress and the friends of the People. And now that he was enlisted in their ranks, he felt it behoved him to live up to their exalted principles. Therefore he gave a shilling to the crossing-sweeper at the bottom of Saint James’s Street, and, like a true democrat, proceeded on foot to the little nest in Knightsbridge, instead of going like the son of a lord in a taxi.
Mary was buried in a delightfully comfortable chair with her toes on the fender. She was also reading a novel; and out of our love for her we must really withhold the name of the author.
... No, young ladies of Newnham and Girton, the name of the author was not Monsieur Anatole France.
“I’ve done it, old girl,” said Mr. Philip, bursting in upon her and saluting her, of course, in the manner ordained by custom for newly-married people. “I really think they are going to take me on.”
Strictly speaking, young man, you had not done it. It was Mary who had done all the doing so far; although, of course, you could hardly be expected to realize that.
“Oh, how splendid!”
“Yes, old girl; and old Sir Joseph Thingamy—nice old boy—says you are to attend all the meetings and make most of the speeches, and I’m to sign a League form for Blackhampton Rovers and kick three goals against Liverpool, and everything will be as right as rain.”