"Well, I shall know what the other side think of their prospects very soon. Mr. Wharton is coming to lunch with us to-morrow."
"Harry Wharton!" he said astonished. "But Mr. Boyce is not supporting him. Your father, I think, is Conservative?"
One of Dick Boyce's first acts as owner of Mellor, when social rehabilitation had still looked probable to him, had been to send a contribution to the funds of the League aforesaid, so that Aldous had public and conspicuous grounds for his remark.
"Need one measure everything by politics?" she asked him a little disdainfully. "Mayn't one even feed a Radical?"
He winced visibly a moment, touched in his philosopher's pride.
"You remind me," he said, laughing and reddening—"and justly—that an election perverts all one's standards and besmirches all one's morals. Then I suppose Mr. Wharton is an old friend?"
"Papa never saw him before last week," she said carelessly. "Now he talks of asking him to stay some time, and says that, although he won't vote for him, he hopes that he will make a good fight."
Raeburn's brow contracted in a puzzled frown.
"He will make an excellent fight," he said rather shortly. "Dodgson hardly hopes to get in. Harry Wharton is a most taking speaker, a very clever fellow, and sticks at nothing in the way of promises. Ah, you will find him interesting, Miss Boyce! He has a co-operative farm on his Lincolnshire property. Last year he started a Labour paper—which I believe you read. I have heard you quote it. He believes in all that you hope for—great increase in local government and communal control—the land for the people—graduated income-tax—the extinction of landlord and capitalist as soon as may be—e tutti quanti. He talks with great eloquence and ability. In our villages I find he is making way every week. The people think his manners perfect. ''Ee 'as a way wi' un,' said an old labourer to me last week. 'If 'ee wor to coe the wild birds, I do believe, Muster Raeburn, they'd coom to un!'"
"Yet you dislike him!" said Marcella, a daring smile dancing on the dark face she turned to him. "One can hear it in every word you say."