“Took with the yokels, took with the yokels,” repeated the marquis. “Ain’t that what speeches are made for? People who can read don’t want to be bawled at. Man will do very well, and we shall have him in the Lords; he’ll call himself Lord Vale Royal, I suppose—ha! ha!—poor Roxhall!”
The lord-lieutenant, who could not accept the social earthquake with the serenity of his friend, shivered, and went to his carriage.
“I shall go and ask our candidate for some money,” murmured the bishop, whose carriage was not quite ready.
The marquis grinned. “Nothing like a cleric for thinking of the main chance!” he said to himself.
The bishop hesitated a few moments, looked up at the steps of the hotel, and hastened across the market-place as rapidly as his portly paunch and tight ecclesiastical shoes permitted. Mr. Massarene was standing on the top of the step with three of his supporters. The churchman took from his pocket a roll of thick vellum-like paper, evidently a memorial or a subscription-list.
“For the rood-screen,” he murmured. “A transcendent work of art. And the restoration of the chauntry. Dear Mr. Massarene, with your admirable principles, I am sure we may count on your support?”
William Massarene, with his gold pencil case between his thick finger and thumb, added his name to the list on the vellum-like scroll.
The lord-lieutenant was on that list for twenty guineas; Lord Roxhall for ten guineas. William Massarene wrote himself down for two hundred guineas.
“Back the Church for never forgetting to do business,” said the marquis with a chuckle to himself; and he too mounted the hotel steps as his ecclesiastical friend descended them, after warmly and blandly pressing the candidate’s hand and inviting him to dinner at the episcopal palace.
“Booking a front seat in heaven, Mr. Massarene?” he cried out in his good-humored contemptuous voice. “Well, come, do something for earth too. You haven’t subscribed to the Thorpe Valley Hounds. Got to do it, you know. Hope you’re sound about Pug.”