'Why—to prefer the cross-cuts, when you might stick to the high road?'
The American girl considered. Then she flashed into a smile.—
'I think I'm for the cross-cuts!'
'Ah—that's because you're American. I might have known you'd say that. All your people want to go one better than anybody else. But I can tell you it doesn't do for Englishmen. They want their noses kept to the grindstone. That's my experience! Of course it was a great pity Manisty ever went into Parliament at all. He'd been abroad for seven or eight years, living with all the big-wigs and reactionaries everywhere. The last thing in the world he knew anything about was English politics.—But then his father had been a Liberal, and a Minister for ever so long. And when Manisty came home, and the member for his father's division died, I don't deny it was very natural they should put him in. And he's such a queer mixture, I dare say he didn't know himself where he was.—But I'll tell you one thing—'
He shook his head slowly,—with all the airs of the budding statesman.
'When you've joined a party,—you must dine with 'em:—It don't sound much—but I declare it's the root of everything. Now Manisty was always dining with the other side. All the great Tory ladies,—and the charming High Churchwomen, and the delightful High Churchmen—and they are nice fellows, I can tell you!—got hold of him. And then it came to some question about these beastly schools—don't you wish they were all at the bottom of the sea?—and I suppose his chief was more annoying than usual—(oh, but he had a number of other coolnesses on his hands by that time—he wasn't meant to be a Liberal!) and his friends talked to him—and so—Ah! there they are!
And lifting his hat, the young man waved it towards Mrs. Burgoyne who with Manisty and three or four other companions had just become visible at the further end of the ilex-avenue which stretched from their stone bench to the villa.
'Why, that's my chief,'—he cried—'I didn't think he was to be here this afternoon. I say, do you know my chief?'
And he turned to her with the brightest, most confiding manner, as though he had been the friend of her cradle.
'Who?'—said Lucy, bewildered—'the tall gentleman with the white hair?'