“Oh yes, I did; you always think I don’t listen; but I can listen to you and watch for him too.”
“What did I say?”
“Never mind, I know.”
“I cannot understand,” he said sullenly, and diverted for a moment from his subject, “why mamma should be always telling you he is a Flavel.”
“Well, really, George, why shouldn’t she? Tryphosa said the other day that if you were to take away grandpapa Flavel’s wig and bands from the picture in the Evangelical Magazine he would be just like him.”
“It seems to me,” replied George, “that if there’s any nonsense going about the town, it always comes to you. People don’t talk such rubbish to me.”
What the effect of this speech might have been cannot be told, for at this moment the baby did really cry, and Priscilla departed hastily for the night. She never spoke to her mother about the election, for, as George suspected, she had not paid the slightest attention to him; and as to exchanging with her mother a single word upon such a subject as politics, or upon any other subject which was in any way impersonal,—she never did such a thing in her life.
It was the uniform practice of the Reverend John Broad to walk down the main Street of Cowfold on Monday morning, and to interchange a few words with any of his congregation whom he might happen to meet. This pastoral perambulation not only added importance to him, and made him a figure in Cowfold, but, coming always on Monday, served to give people some notion of a preoccupation during the other days of the week which was forbidden, for mental reasons, on the day after Sunday. On this particular Monday Mr. Broad was passing Mr. Allen’s shop, and seeing father and son there, went in. Mr. Allen himself was at a desk which stood near the window, and George was at the counter, in a black apron, weighing nails.
After an unimportant remark or two about the weather, Mr. Allen began in a cheery tone, so as to prevent offence:
“Mr. Broad, we are sorry we cannot persuade you to vote for the good cause.”