“Is there anything in the paper, Pat?” said Mr. Dalyell.
“Not much. But it’s ill talking between a full man and a fasting. I’ve seen what there is, and you’ve not. Here’s the Times. Munro’s in for that place in the North.”
“Bless my soul! and you call that nothing? Another firebrand, and as good as two lost in our majority. That’s bad, Pat; that’s bad.”
“I never think anything of a bye-election. They’re all in the nature of accidents. There’s a good speech of Gladstone’s at one of the Lancaster towns, and John Bright flaming on the side of peace like a house on fire.”
“And he says there’s nothing in the paper!” said Mr. Dalyell, as he dropped into an easy-chair in his turn with the great broad-sheet of the Times in his hand.
“When gentlemen begin talking politics,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “I always think it is time for the ladies to retire. But you have begun early to-night. Are you going into town at your usual hour to-morrow, Robert? I hope you’ll be home early, for, with Fred away, there will be no man but only the servants in the house.”
“And what the worse will you be for that, Amelia? There are plenty to protect you, I hope, if I were never to be seen again.”
“Robert! that’s not a thing to joke about. I never feel safe, you know, in this big, rambling old house when you’re not here—if it was only the rats——”
“What could the rats do to you, mother?”
“Hold your peace, Fred!” said Mrs. Dalyell. “I sometimes think of Bishop Hatto in that poem you used all to be so fond of—and those in the Pied Piper. If you just heard some of old Janet Macalister’s stories, they would make your hair stand on end.”