"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other's compliment.
"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing one."
"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as fifty or sixty having been present."
"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims to anything it may conceive itself entitled to enjoy," observed Mr. Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though I think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted on being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I understand, were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited to its own sense of propriety."
Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr. Bragg, for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the dignity and fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an affair of this nature.
"They passed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus resumed, with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this nature. "A set of resolutions, sir!"
"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the Americans are a set-of-resolutions-passing people. Three cannot get together, without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution is as much a consequence of such an 'organization,'--I believe that is the approved word,--as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling of a hen."
"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"
"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the pleasure of obtaining from you."
Again Aristabulus glanced at Steadfast, and Steadfast threw back the look of surprise, for, to both it was matter of real astonishment that any man should be so indifferent to the resolutions of a meeting that had been regularly organized, with a chairman and secretary at its head, and which so unequivocally professed to be the public.