"Now mind," said Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, impressively, "this is the last time I shall take any trouble about you. She's a very nice girl, quite pretty, and she'll have a lot of money. You can be very pleasant when you like--""This unsolicited testimonial--"
"Which isn't often--and if you don't do it this time I wash my hands of you. Why, how old are you?""Hush, Mrs. Hilary,"
"You must be nearly--"
"It's false--false--false!"
"Come along," said Mrs. Hilary, and she added over her shoulder, "she has a slight north-country accent.""It might have been Scotch," said I.
"She plays the piano a good deal."
"It might have been the fiddle," said I.
"She's very fond of Browning."
"It might have been Ibsen," said I.
Mrs. Hilary, seeing that I was determined to look on the bright side, smiled graciously on me and introduced me to the young lady. She was decidedly good-looking, fresh and sincere of aspect, with large inquiring eyes--eyes which I felt would demand a little too much of me at breakfast--but then a large tea-urn puts that all right.
"Miss Sophia Milton--Mr. Carter," said Mrs. Hilary, and left us.
Well, we tried the theaters first; but as she had only been to the Lyceum and I had only been to the Gaioety, we soon got to the end of that. Then we tried Art: she asked me what I thought of Degas: I evaded the question by criticizing a drawing of a horse in last week's Punch--which she hadn't seen. Upon this she started literature. She said "Some Qualms and a Shiver" was the book of the season. I put my money on "The Queen of the Quorn."Dead stop again! And I saw Mrs. Hilary's eye upon me; there was wrath in her face. Something must be done. A brilliant idea seized me. I had read that four-fifths of the culture of England were Conservative. I also was a Conservative. It was four to one on! I started politics. I could have whooped for joy when Ielicited something particularly incisive about the ignorance of the masses.
"I do hope you agree with me," said Miss Milton. "The more one reads and thinks, the more one sees how fatally false a theory it is that the ignorant masses--people such as I have described--can ever rule a great Empire.""The Empire wants gentlemen; that's what it wants," said I, nodding my head and glancing triumphantly at Mrs. Hilary.
"Men and women," said she, "who are acquainted with the best that has been said and thought on all important subjects."At the time I believed this observation to be original, but Ihave since been told that it was borrowed. I was delighted with it.
"Yes," said I, "and have got a stake in the country, you know, and know how to behave emselves in the House, don't you know?""What we have to do," pursued Miss Milton, "is to guide the voters. These poor rustics need to be informed--""Just so," I broke in. "They have to be told--""Of the real nature of the questions--"
"And which candidate to support."
"Or they must infallibly"--she exclaimed.
"Get their marching orders," I cried, in rapture. It was exactly what I always did on my small property.
"Oh, I didn't quite mean that," she said reproachfully.
"Oh, well, neither did I--quite," I responded adroitly. What was wrong with the girl now?
"But with the help of the League--" she went on.
"Do you belong?" I cried, more delighted than ever.
"O, yes," said she. "I think it's a duty. I worked very hard at the last election. I spent days distributing packages of--"Then I made, I'm sorry to say, a false step. I observed, interrupting:
"But it's ticklish work now, eh? Six months' 'hard' wouldn't be pleasant, would it?""What do you mean, Mr.--er Carter?" she asked.
I was still blind. I believe I winked, and I'm sure I whispered, "Tea."Miss Milton drew herself up very straight.
"I do not bribe," she said. "What I distribute is pamphlets."Now I suppose that "pamphlets" and "blankets don't really sound much alike, but I was agitated.
