"But they have dropped me down—they think to crush me."
"If they do, it will be by severely letting you alone; and what can you do against that? You can't quarrel with a man merely because he ceases to invite you to dinner, and that's about the way of it."
"I'll fight this out for all that."
"You'll soon get tired of it. It's beating the air, you know. Of course, if you want to annoy the Government, you could easily get some of us to take up your case—no difficulty about that—and make you the hero of a grievance and a debate, and so on."
"I want nothing of the kind! I don't want any one to trouble himself about me, and I don't care to be taken in hand by any one. If Englishmen will not listen to a plain statement of right, why then——But I know they will."
The conviction itself was expressed in the tone of one who by its very assertion protests against a rising doubt and tries to stifle it.
"Very good," said the other. "Try it on. We shall soon see. I have a sort of interest in the matter, for I had a grievance myself, and I have still, only I went about things in a different way—looking for redress, I mean."
"What did you do?"
"It's a longish story, and quite a different line from yours, and it would bore you to hear, even if you understood it. I got into the House and made myself a nuisance. I put money in my purse; it came in somehow. I watch the department that I once belonged to with the eye of a lynx. Well, I shall look out for you and give you a hand if I can, always supposing it would annoy the Government—any Government—I don't care what."
Mr. Heron looked at him with wonder and incredulity.