Sir Robert exploded. “Views!” he cried. “Views! The butcher with views! Why, damme, White, you must be mad! Mad! Since when have butchers taken to politics, or had views?”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir,” White mumbled.
Sir Robert struck his stick fiercely on a step. “But I do! I do! And I know this,” he continued, “that for twenty years he’s had thirty pounds a year to vote as I tell him. By gad, I never heard such a thing in my life! Never! You don’t mean to tell me that the man thinks the vote’s his own to do what he likes with?”
“I am afraid,” the agent admitted reluctantly, “that that is what he’s saying, sir.”
Sir Robert’s thin face turned a dull red. “I never heard of such impudence in all my life,” he said, “never! A butcher with views! And going to vote for them! Why, damme,” he continued, with angry sarcasm, “we’ll have the tailors, the bakers, and the candlestickmakers voting their own way next. Good G—d! What does the man think he’s had thirty pounds a year for for all these years, if not to do as he is bid?”
“He’s behaving very ill, sir,” White said, severely, “very ill.”
“Ill!” Sir Robert cried; “I should think he was, the scoundrel!” And he foamed over afresh, though we need not follow him. When he had cooled somewhat, “Well,” he said, “I can turn him out, and that I’ll do, neck and crop! By G—d, I will! I’ll ruin him. But there, it’s the big rats set the fashion and the little ones follow it. This is Spinning Jenny’s work. I wish I had cut off my hand before I voted for him. Well, well, well!” And he stood a moment in bitter contemplation of Sir Robert Peel’s depravity. It was nothing that Sir Robert was sound on reform. By adopting the Catholic side on the claims he—he, whose very nickname was Orange Peel—had rent the party. And all these evils were the result!
The agent coughed.
Sir Robert, who was no fool, looked sharply at him. “What!” he said grimly. “Not another renegade?”
“No, sir,” White answered timidly. “But Thrush, the pig-killer—he’s one of the old lot, the Cripples, that your father put into the corporation——”