“Bringing ruination on the country, eh?” Flixton continued. And he passed his arm through Vaughan’s, and walked on with him. “That’s the ticket?”
“Some say so, but I hope not.”
“Hope’s a cock that won’t fight, my boy!” the Honourable Bob rejoined. “Fact is, you’re doing your best, only the House of Lords is in the way, and won’t let you! They’ll pull you up sweetly by and by, see if they don’t!”
“And what will the country say to that?” Vaughan rejoined good-humouredly.
“Country be d——d! That’s what all your chaps are saying. And I tell you what! That book-in-breeches man—what do you call him—Macaulay?—ought to be pulled up! He ought indeed! I read one of his farragoes the other day and it was full of nothing but ‘Think long, I beg, before you thwart the public will!’ and ‘The might of an angered people!’ and ‘Let us beware of rousing!’ and all that rubbish! Meaning, my boy, only he didn’t dare to say it straight out, that if the Lords did not give way to you chaps, there’d be a revolution; and the deuce to pay! And I say he ought to be in the dock. He’s as bad as old Brereton down in Bristol, predicting fire and flames and all the rest of it.”
“But you cannot deny, Flixton,” Vaughan answered soberly, “that the country is excited as we have never known it excited before? And that a rising is not impossible!”
“A rising! I wish we could see one! That’s just what we want,” the Honourable Bob answered, stopping and bringing his companion to a sudden stand also. “Eh? Who was that old Roman—Poppæa, or some name like that, who said he wished the people had all one head that he might cut it off?” suiting the action to the word with his cane. “A rising, begad? The sooner the better! The old Fourteenth would know how to deal with it!”
“I don’t know,” Vaughan answered, “that you would be so confident if you were once face to face with it!”
“Oh, come! Don’t talk nonsense!”
“Well, but——”