“Still a bold front will do much!” he argued.
“A bold front!” Brereton replied feverishly. “No, but management may! Management may. They give me eighty swords to control eighty thousand people! Why, it’s my belief”—and he dropped his voice and laid his hand on his companion’s arm,—“that the Government wants a riot! Ay, by G—d, it is! To give the lie to Wetherell and prove that the country, and Bristol in particular, is firm for the Bill!”
“Oh, but that’s absurd!” Vaughan answered; though he recalled what Brougham had said.
“Absurd or not, nine-tenths of Bristol believe it,” Brereton retorted. “And I believe it! But I’ll be no butcher. Besides, do you see how I am placed? If in putting down this riot which is in the Government interest, and is believed to be fostered by them, I exceed my duty by a jot, I am a lost man! A lost man! Now do you see?”
“I can’t think it’s as bad as that,” Vaughan said.
XXIX
AUTUMN LEAVES
Miss Sibson paused to listen, but heard nothing. And disappointed, and with a sigh, she spread a clean handkerchief over the lap of her gown and helped herself to part of a round of buttered toast.
“She’ll not come,” she muttered. “I was a fool to think it! An old fool to think it!” And she bit viciously into the toast.
It was long past her usual tea-time, yet she paused a second time to listen, before she raised her first cup of tea to her lips. A covered dish which stood on a brass trivet before the bright coal fire gave forth a savoury smell, and the lamplight which twinkled on sparkling silver and old Nantgarw, discovered more than the tea-equipage. The red moreen curtains were drawn before the windows, a tabby cat purred sleepily on the hearth; in all Bristol was no more cosy or more cheerful scene. Yet Miss Sibson left the savoury dish untouched, and ate the toast with less than her customary appetite.
“I shall set,” she murmured, “‘The Deceitfulness of Riches’ for the first copy when the children return. And for the second ‘Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds!’ And”—she continued with determination, though there was no one to be intimidated—“for the third, ‘There’s No Fool Like an Old Fool!’”